


Universal Appeal

by notaverse



Series: JE Fleet [5]
Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, M/M, Military, Parallel Universes, Space Pirates, uke!Jin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-01
Updated: 2011-10-01
Packaged: 2017-10-24 05:37:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notaverse/pseuds/notaverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The JE Fleet ship <i>KAT-TUN</i> goes AWOL in more ways than one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** JE Fleet V: Universal Appeal 1/10  
>  **Series:** JE Fleet  
>  **Fandom:** KAT-TUN  
>  **Pairing:** Kame x Jin  
>  **Rating:** R (m/m activity)  
>  **Genre:** AU, crack, sci-fi  
>  **Disclaimer:** Not mine, damnit.
> 
> Takes place straight after III, but won't make any sense unless you've read IV, so if you're new to the series, you might want to read them in order.

Sharp-suited lawyers argued back and forth in the darkened courtroom, spreading their poison through the crowd. Giant shadows rose from the bench to the galleries, faceless accusers blending into the background, all of them focused on the dock and the pitiful wretch awaiting judgment.

It was the first time Akanishi Jin had been on trial, though with his career, he'd expected it to happen eventually. No one got away with it forever. Even old man Kitagawa had been up before the judge a time or two, though the judge was always in his pocket and the prosecutor had laser sights showing on his jacket.

Jin didn't have those advantages. He barely had a defense attorney. The wraith slipped between the shadows to whisper the occasional question in his ear, but beyond that, he was on his own. Stripped of his rank and comm badge, without a single crew member to support him, Captain Akanishi Jin of the JE Fleet ship _KAT-TUN_ was captain in his heart only. If they drummed him out of the United Solar Navy on some trumped-up charge, would it be the end?

It wasn't even a military court. When they'd hauled Jin out of his cell, he'd been expecting to see a panel of JE Fleet officers. Perhaps the charges were from his pirate days, and his naval career would simply be brushed aside as if he'd never signed up at all.

It seemed otherwise when a blinding beam of light cut through the darkness and a voice boomed out, "Akanishi Jin, you stand accused of theft of the Jaguar-class ship _KAT-TUN_ , conspiracy to overthrow Earth President Tsubasa, and having a bad hair day. How do you plead?"

"Bad hair day?" Jin spluttered, causing his ghostly lawyer to spin frenzied circles at his elbow. "I've been locked up below for a week - of course I'm having a bad hair day! You try spending time in those cells and see how glamorous you look when you come out!"

"Silence!" roared the light.

Calloused fingers seized Jin's wrists, yanking them behind him; Jin pulled back at the first touch of cold metal. If they cuffed him again, they'd take him back downstairs and lose him in the dark. He lashed out with a closed left fist, allowing himself a grim smile when the fingers retreated, their owner groaning in pain. Jin wasn't going down so easily this time.

The fingers kept coming, though. They grasped Jin's shoulder and shook him roughly, and then he was falling from the black night of the courtroom...

...through the grey mists of a dream...

...back into his own bed, where his co-captain, Kamenashi Kazuya, was waiting for him with an unforgiving glare.

"If you keep playing Grand Theft Autopilot late at night with Junno, you're sleeping alone. Forever," Kame threatened. "I've had enough of getting in fights when we're both asleep."

Jin checked the display on his alarm clock - he'd only been asleep for three hours. No wonder he felt like hell. "We didn't play tonight," he mumbled. "And they accused me of having a bad hair day."

"It's the middle of the night and you're worried about your hair?"

"It's not the hair that worries me!"

Kame rubbed his eyes and propped himself up on one elbow so he could see Jin properly by the dim cabin nightlight. Not that 'night' and 'day' had much relevance when one was out in some backwater galaxy without so much as a single habitable planet, but it helped to keep a regular sleep schedule. "This can't wait till morning?"

"I dreamt I was being charged with theft, Kame. Theft of this ship, and conspiracy to overthrow Earth President Tsubasa." Jin slumped back against the pillows; tired, but knowing he wasn't likely to sleep further that night.

"I wouldn't mind overthrowing him but I certainly wouldn't want to try replacing him," Kame said. After the whole mess in Eros City, where Tsubasa and his partner, JE Fleet Admiral Takizawa Hideaki, had used Kame as a stalking horse to flush out a terrorist organisation, Kame had good reason to resent the man. "And you didn't steal the ship. For once."

"But I did! _We_ did," Jin corrected himself. "Our month's leave was up three weeks ago! We're AWOL, Kame. Don't you find it a little strange that no one's tried to warn us to get ourselves back to the Sol System?"

"What I find strange is that you're worried about it. Since when were you such a stickler for military regulations?"

Coming, as it did, from a man who'd once tried to destroy the entire human race over as petty an emotion as jealousy, this didn't do much to help Jin put things in perspective. "Since I realised how much trouble I'd cause for everyone else on the ship."

Kame sighed. "Jin, your best friend happens to be your commanding officer, and he's well-used to your ways. If you can't take advantage of that, then you're not the man I married."

"It was a fake wedding," Jin said glumly.

"Didn't stop us from taking a real honeymoon, though."

Since departing Eros City, the JE Fleet ship _KAT-TUN_ had spent its month of leave (and then some) as far from the Sol System as possible, as the crew had made a unanimous decision that rather than return to Earth for a break, they'd follow their captains on what proved to be a shopping and sightseeing tour of outer space. Kame worked off some of his anger at the military by spending a fortune at some of the most exclusive boutiques in the universe, while Jin improved his rap skills by hitting every club they passed.

"Some honeymoon. The trainees kept pestering me to take them out to eat," Jin said, but he wasn't mad about it. Not really. They'd all had a nice holiday, with no psychotic computers trying to eat them, or terrorists trying to poison them with red hair dye, and he was glad that Kame had been able to relax properly for the first time since the war with the Fahngarlians.

But there was a limit to how long they could stay out and play, and they'd passed it three weeks ago.

"You owed them for fixing the hot tub," Kame pointed out, which Jin thought was unfair as they'd both made good use of it, frequently at the same time. "Tell you what: if it means that much to you we can head for home and try to contact someone to yell at us. In the morning. Go back to sleep so I can do the same?"

Jin gave it his best shot, sprawling out on the mattress like a dishevelled starfish and listening to Kame breathe in the hopes that his mind would slow to a similar, regular pattern, eventually switching off altogether. No such luck. Twenty minutes later he'd shifted position thrice, knocking his partner in the process and almost losing a pillow down the side of the bed.

"I'm going back to my own cabin," Kame said, suddenly sitting up. "It would be nice if one of us managed to get some sleep, and I don't think it's going to be you."

"Sorry," Jin mumbled. "I keep seeing lawyers when I close my eyes. It wouldn't be so bad if they all looked like you, but they're not even human."

Unsure whether to be flattered or horrified, Kame laughed anyway because the whole situation was ridiculous. Jin normally slept like the dead - at least, he had until Kame had walked out on him, believing him to be having an affair with Commodore Yamashita Tomohisa. Some of the more peculiar events over the last couple of years were obviously starting to catch up with him.

"Let's see if I can tire you out a little," he suggested. "Then perhaps you won't be so restless."

Jin approved of this idea. Not that he was likely to argue when Kame's hand was trailing its way down his chest, brushing lightly over bare skin as it sought more sensitive parts. The dim nightlight scarcely allowed them to catch each other's eyes but the warmth was always there, a tenderness born of shared history and a spark that no fight, no matter how serious, could ever completely extinguish.

Nudging the covers away, Jin shifted to let Kame press against his side without hitting his head on the nightstand - always a passion killer - and gave himself up to sensation. Kame's hand, stroking gently between his legs. Kame's lips, brushing over his collarbone, careful to dance around the old shockstick burn. Just...Kame.

"Maybe we can market you as an insomnia cure," Jin said, struggling to keep his voice even.

For that, Kame nipped his throat. "The rest of the universe will have to find their own; I'm a limited edition."

"You're definitely one of a kind." The tail end of Jin's agreement disappeared, swallowed by a kiss and washed down with caresses.

As a plan to wear Jin out it wasn't working particularly well, but he was more than willing to keep trying. If he couldn't sleep, he could at least enjoy the rest of his night, and if he ended up dozing on the bridge in the morning it wouldn't be the first time. One hand found Kame's hip and clung, clenching on each stroke; Kame laughed and muttered a warning about bruises. Jin didn't care, he was so close. Just a little more...

A fine sight they made, two JE Fleet captains entwined on the sheets with barely a scrap of fabric between them and no eyes for anyone but each other. Warm, comfortable, secure in the knowledge that no one could possibly get to them.

Except their own crew.

Jin was all of ten seconds away from satisfaction when the cabin door slid open to reveal Ensign Nakamaru Yuichi, the _KAT-TUN_ 's resident hotshot pilot and beatboxer extraordinaire. "I think I deserve a promotion," he said.

Red of face and short of both breath and temper, Jin scrabbled for cover and hoped Nakamaru couldn't see where Kame's hands were. "You can have one if you walk out right now!"

"Seriously?" Nakamaru looked like he couldn't believe his good fortune, eyes and smile wide as he retreated to the corridor, completely oblivious to the tryst he'd just interrupted.

As the door closed, Lieutenant Tanaka Koki's voice floated through. "See, I told you it's all about the timing!"

Kame glared at the door. "Nice going," he said. "They'll all be trying that now."

Jin collapsed against the pillows and wished he'd remembered to ask Engineering about getting the lock fixed.

\-----

With Nakamaru's unwanted intrusion having destroyed the mood, neither captain had felt much inclined to continue. Kame had retreated to his own cabin, which had a working lock, leaving Jin to fume silently for a good half an hour before sleep overtook him again. There were no more courtroom dreams.

The next morning found Jin on the bridge, engaged in an argument with his newly-promoted pilot. "That's not how it works," he kept insisting.

"Field promotion," Nakamaru retorted. "And about time too. I'm the oldest person in the crew!"

"Rank isn't based on age," Ensign Taguchi Junnosuke said. "Else Kame couldn't be a captain."

Commander Ueda Tatsuya couldn't resist joining the discussion, if only because no one on the _KAT-TUN_ had ever succeeded in keeping quiet about anything. "I don't think voting on your captain and playing jan ken for the rest is accepted military practice."

"Neither is wearing a tracksuit on the bridge, but that doesn't stop you," Koki said.

Ueda beamed at him. "Now our captains have finally dragged themselves out of bed, I'm going for a run around Deck 12. Three hundred laps - who's with me?"

One starstruck trainee immediately dashed back to his quarters to change into more suitable attire for a workout, thrilled by the mere thought of going for a run with the ship's second-in-command.

Koki frowned after him. "We'll have to send someone to pick him up off the floor later. It's not safe to leave trainees lying around in the corridors - Jin might trip over them."

"It only happened once!" Jin's protest was so vehement he almost fell off the arm of his chair. "And don't distract me when I'm trying to tell Nakamaru it's not fair to walk in on people in the middle of the night and demand a promotion. We might've been asleep!"

"Would've been asleep, if you hadn't been having weird nightmares again," Kame mumbled.

"If you'd been asleep, I'd have left without saying anything." Nakamaru coloured slightly. "But you obviously weren't, and Koki said it seemed like a good time because you'd agree to anything, and-"

"Spare us." Kame held up a hand. "Congratulations, Lieutenant Nakamaru Yuichi. Unfortunately you won't get a pay increase because we've been avoiding all contact with the United Solar Navy for the past seven weeks, so they won't know unless we return to the Sol System. You don't get to wear more pips on your uniform, because none of us wear uniform. You will still be responsible for exactly the same number of pilots in training, and will still have exactly one sixth of the command crew vote."

The chain of command on the _KAT-TUN_ worked in a slightly unusual fashion for a military vessel. With the six members of the command crew having previously worked together as a band of space pirates, each man weighed in equally when it came to making decisions. Fortunately, this didn't happen too often, because getting them all to agree on something was a task that drove the trainees to despair.

Nakamaru appeared to be on the edge of despair himself. "So I don't really get anything out of it?"

"You get to outrank Junno?" Koki suggested, amusing everyone except Junno himself, who was too busy planning a virtual billiards game with Yonehana to notice.

"I still don't think it should count," Jin sulked.

"You're just embarrassed because I walked in on you and Kame-"

"It counts!" Jin said hastily, before Nakamaru could scandalise the trainees. It wasn't the first time he and Kame had been caught in a delicate situation, but most people had the decency not to interrupt with promotion requests.

"Settled?" Kame said. No one dared argue. "Good. Ueda, before you go for a run, we need a vote."

"If this is about whether or not Koki should dye his hair pink again-"

Kame gave him a withering look. "Far more important than that - besides, we've all agreed it's never happening again and that's final. It's just too disturbing.

"No, the question is: should we return to the Sol System?"

Junno stopped his planning long enough to check the ship's accounts. In addition to heading up Communications, he was also responsible for the _KAT-TUN_ 's finances - a role Ueda had been forced to hand over after admitting he never knew what anything cost. "I don't know about our individual accounts but collectively we're running out of money. We've been through so many systems lately that only accept hard currency that our stash is running low."

"It's the hyperdrive fuel," Nakamaru said, shaking his head sadly. "The price just keeps rising."

Koki took his revenge for the pink hair crack. "So does Kame's bar tab."

Kame ignored him. "That's one in favour of going home. I'm also in favour, if only so Jin will stop trying to kill me in his sleep."

"It's not my fault," Jin insisted, but he couldn't help looking guilty. He explained to the others. "I keep having these dreams that I'm being charged with stealing the ship and plotting conspiracy to overthrow Earth President Tsubasa."

"And having a bad hair day," Kame added.

Jin sighed. "And having a bad hair day. We've been AWOL for over three weeks now and no one has even tried to contact us. The longer we stay out here, the worse it'll be when we get back."

"You didn't steal the ship," Ueda said. "We all did. You can't take sole responsibility for this."

"You're not planning to overthrow Tsubasa, are you?" As the man in charge of Security, it was part of Koki's job to be suspicious. "Just checking."

"Certainly not!" Jin said. "I don't want to go into politics!"

"Pity, 'cause I kind of like the idea. Of going into politics, not overthrowing the government," Koki hastened to clarify. "I figure that's a respectable career goal."

"You've gone from being a jewel thief to being a space pirate to being a Lieutenant in the United Solar Navy." Kame's amusement was well-founded, since all of them save himself had a criminal background prior to taking up piracy. "How does being a politician fit into that?"

A handful of Koki's flock of trainees, all of whom had 'JOKER' emblazoned on their sleeves, immediately turned their backs on Kame in protest.

Nakamaru spread his hands in a peace-making gesture. "Leaving that aside for now, how does everyone else feel about returning?"

"After the way they used us in Eros City - especially Kame - I don't really feel like going back and giving them another try, you know?" Koki said. "Ueda got shot, Jin got stunned, we all could've been killed and what did we get out of it?"

"Jin always gets stunned," Kame said, waving a dismissive hand. "I'm not happy about it either, Koki, but anyone who wants to leave is free to do so. No hard feelings."

"It's not fair to the trainees," Nakamaru said when Koki remained stubbornly silent, refusing to respond. "Or the guys on loan from the Academy."

Yonehana Tsuyoshi, Machida Shingo, and Yara Tomoyuki waved from their corner of the bridge, where they were supposed to be observing the progress of the trainees.

"What I mean is, none of them signed up for this. If we desert, we'd just be going back to where we started. But we can't take them down with us."

General consensus was that Nakamaru made a great deal of sense, as Kame suddenly started whittering about being a good captain and looking out for his juniors, Ueda agreed (though only so he could escape for his run), and even Koki started to weaken.

Not enough, however. "Perhaps I should take Koki aside and persuade him?" Kame suggested, a whisper meant for Jin's ears only.

"No." Jin had more than a passing familiarity with Kame's methods of persuasion, and had no intention of sharing with Koki. "Just promise him he can get a puppy or something."

Kame's laughter was warm against Jin's ear. "I meant that I'd talk to him, idiot. With words."

Fortunately for Jin, this proved to be unnecessary: Koki addressed him directly. "You're really worrying about this? That you're going to be held responsible for running off with this ship and everyone on it?"

"Yeah, but..." Jin gulped down a mouthful of air, which didn't help steady him any. "More than that, I'm worried because we haven't heard anything from anyone since we left the Sol System. Not just the JE Fleet, I mean. None of our friends have tried to contact us either. Not even Yamapi, and he should definitely have sent a message."

"All the equipment's in full working order," Junno confirmed. "We've been picking up forwarded messages whenever we're in range, but all we're receiving is junk mail and Kame's baseball stats."

Kame shrugged. "Maybe Yamapi's taking a vacation too," he suggested. "He probably had a hard time dealing with Ikuta Toma and the others."

"He'd still have contacted me." Jin was adamant about this. His best friend would definitely have sent him a message; if not before, then once the _KAT-TUN_ had taken more than its month of leave. "There's something weird going on."

"And you want to go back and find out what it is." Koki mulled this over for a moment. Following Jin's whims had landed them all in trouble more than once. Was it better to stay off the radar altogether, and never return to the Sol System?

But then, that meant they could never return home, either. Home was Earth, brilliant in blue and green...but home was the _KAT-TUN_ , too, and all who served aboard her.

"Let's go," Koki said at last. "If it looks like we're going to get hauled over the coals, we take what we can get and fly."

"After all the engine upgrades we've been given, there's not a ship in the fleet that'll catch us." Nakamaru positively shone with pride.

"We head for home, then," Kame said. "All agreed?"

"Agreed," Ueda said. "Can I go for my run now?"


	2. Chapter 2

Even for a Jaguar-class ship with more fancy modifications than one of Koki's shirts, home was still very far away, involving multiple jumps and several stops to check that they were going in the right direction. (They weren't.)

Every time they dropped out of hyperspace, Junno checked for messages, but still, the only communications relayed to them were sports scores (Kame had a subscription), details of insurance reductions for the over-fifties (somehow, Nakamaru's name had gotten on their mailing list), generic junk mail and a fascinating article entitled, "So, You Want to Start Your Own Harem', which was addressed to Ueda.

"Still nothing." Jin slumped down in the left captain's seat, becoming more agitated with each jump. "Can we send out a message ourselves?"

In the right captain's seat, Kame was catching up on the results of the latest game in the Inner Planet Series and only half-listening to his partner. "No point," he said absently. "We're not that far now, and I'd rather not have a welcoming committee when we arrive. There's- how the hell did they manage that?"

"Huh?"

"The Lunar City Lunatics," Kame said, thrusting the datapad under Jin's nose. "They beat the New York Yankees!"

"So?" Jin found baseball entertaining enough if he happened to be watching it - particularly if Kame was playing - but he didn't know much about the teams.

"So, it means the Lunatics have broken a three hundred year losing streak. Every season, they've lost more players to injury and illness - and occasionally death - than every other team put together! Last I heard, the best pitcher they'd had in a decade got knocked out by a fly ball at someone else's game, and they were debating about whether or not to switch off the life-support."

Jin winced. "That's some bad luck."

"Looks like they've finally managed to turn things around," Kame said. "The last few games should be interesting. Hey, are we close enough to tune in to the entertainment broadcasts?" His question was addressed to the bridge in general, for although the two captains excelled at vanishing into their own private world, they were, in reality, surrounded by crew members, some of whom were taking bets on how long it would be before the pair began one of their infamous squabbles, to be followed by the inevitable and far more pleasurable making up.

"We're about to drop out of hyperspace by Pluto," Nakamaru said. "Might get something then."

Kame listened for the subtle change in the whine of the engines as they dropped to sub-light speeds, far enough from Pluto that they wouldn't risk collision, and reached for the controls of the main viewscreen. It no longer hurt so much for him to look out on the universe. He knew he wouldn't get anything from the Inner Planets, not at that distance, but there was a chance they'd be carrying the games on Pluto's networks too. After all, sports were universal.

Reception was fuzzy despite Junno's best efforts, but after they determined that what appeared to be static was actually news coverage of a severe snowstorm, they had greater success locating actual channels. Pluto's Home Shopping Network didn't have much to offer - mostly alcohol, which the _KAT-TUN_ usually had in ample supply - and the only general entertainment channel showed nothing but re-runs of 'Tonkatsu!', an old drama slated by critics and animal activists alike for its story about a hair-dressing pig.

Finally, they hit on the sports channel. Possibly.

"That's not a bat, is it?" Koki said, peering at the screen. "You don't hold it that low."

Kame strained to make it out through the fuzz. "Maybe we've found the cricket?"

"It's too thin to be a cricket bat," Jin said. "Besides, you don't use them to hit bowling balls, do you?"

"I don't think that's a bowling ball..." Junno, who'd played electronic versions of every sport going at least once, searched his memory for something that might fit. "I think it's curling," he said at last.

Kame switched off in disgust. "So much for that idea. I'll just have to wait until we get closer to Earth."

"I know how we could kill time till we get there-" Jin began, but Kame shushed him and left to find a snack.

"Everyone ready for the next jump?" Nakamaru addressed his question to the ship as a whole, over the comm. "Nobody changing their contact lenses, or applying eyeliner, or doing anything else that could be very painful when the ship shudders?"

A guilty-looking trainee standing by the navicomp hastily pocketed his eyeliner pencil.

"Don't take us right to Earth," Jin said. "Bring us out by Red Spot Terminal."

Kame returned with his strawberry Pocky just in time to hear this. "Why stop at Jupiter? Souvenir shopping?"

Jin's smile was grim. "Because it's as close as we can get to Earth and still maintain some independence."

Jupiter's governor, though a stickler for the rules and tough on any sort of organised crime, nevertheless insisted that Jupiter and its satellites, both natural and manmade, retain an element of neutrality in Sol System affairs. Even the USN had only a tiny base in the area - one used so infrequently that it doubled as a ramen stand.

"You want to test the waters." Kame nibbled thoughtfully on a stick. "The only people around Pluto are like us - our former selves, at any rate. Red Spot Terminal would be more...civilised."

"And it's close enough to the Inner Planets that the news will be more reliable," Ueda said, "though not so much that we're likely to be spotted."

"Exactly." Jin shot a grateful glance round at his crew. He meant to try contacting Pi - his best friend, not his commanding officer - but under the circumstances, he preferred to do it a nice, safe distance from the nearest naval base.

The next jump took the _KAT-TUN_ into Jupiter's local space; Nakamaru moved them slowly into the Arrivals zone around Red Spot Terminal and made the arrangements with the station authorities for them to dock.

"They're asking for length of stay," he said. "What should I tell them?"

"Must be a new process," Koki said. "They never used to care, so long as you didn't try to leave without telling them."

Kame caught Jin's eye and shrugged. "Two days, maybe? We don't have to stick to it."

Two days it was. While Nakamaru brought them smoothly into Bay 94, Jin attempted to compose a message to Yamapi. It didn't take him long. He thought it was best to leave out all mention of work, make the message casual and friendly and devoid of all point. He also made it text-only.

"You haven't even said where we are," Kame noted, reading over Jin's shoulder. "Unless I'm missing a coded message somewhere between you asking after his health, and telling him you made it to the final level of Cronos Crusaders without losing a single life. Which I still don't believe, by the way."

"I've got witnesses." Jin hit the 'transmit' button. Hopefully, somewhere in the Sol System, Yamapi would be alerted at some point by a beeping on his datband. "You think I'm being paranoid?"

"No, but you've just sent a message out from this ship. He could simply track it back and find you anyway. We don't have the most inconspicuous vessel in the universe."

"At least it's not pink." Which was more than could be said for Yamapi's flagship, the _Pin_.

The _KAT-TUN_ shuddered briefly as the magnetic clamps took effect, then fell still. "We're docked," Nakamaru announced over the comm. "Anyone disembarking?"

There was a sudden rush for the bridge doors, which Koki impeded by planting himself in front of the exit and gracing the offenders with his toughest glare. Once the laughter had died down, Kame attempted to impose some sort of order on his crew.

"Nobody goes anywhere until Jin and I return," he said, and none of the trainees dared argue with him.

Ueda did, of course. "Why is it our two captains are always so keen to look for trouble together?"

"We're not looking for trouble," Jin protested.

"It just finds you, somehow," Ueda said. "Were you ever cursed as a child?"

"Frequently, I'm sure," Kame said, earning himself a half-hearted slap on the head from his partner. "But we're just going out to see what's been happening in the two months since we left, maybe check if anyone's been looking for us. When we get back, anyone who wants to go stretch their legs can do so - in pairs or more. I don't want anyone getting lost when we're on our way home."

"Will you at least let a couple of my guys follow you?" Koki asked. "Just to watch your backs."

Koki's Security trainees looked so eager to assist, Kame almost didn't have the heart to say no. "It's the most law-abiding orbital station in the universe - you think anything's going to happen to us?"

"It's my job to think something's going to happen to you," Koki pointed out, but he relented in the end - after Kame turned on the charm. Jin looked away.

Despite Kame's confidence that they would be perfectly safe, he and Jin weren't going anywhere unarmed. Both men had their blasters with gene-locked triggers, custom-made for them by Matsumoto Jun, the ultra-fashionable weapons designer for ARASHI - Agency of Really Awesome, Smart and Handsome Individuals - military intelligence disguised as a talent agency. Kame liked to keep a stunner handy too, just in case; both weapons tucked discreetly under his black leather jacket.

"I doubt anyone will mistake you for JE Fleet captains," Ueda said, laughing, "but keep your comm badges concealed anyway. No sense in advertising you're not tourists."

"You don't think the bulldog pins look touristy?" Jin quite liked his.

"I've been thinking of changing them," Junno said. "How do you guys feel about wearing miniature N-5000 controllers?" He received a mix of blank stares and insults for this suggestion.

Kame had a better idea. "How about strawberries?"

"Too cute." Jin ignored the strawberry-print band round his own wrist, a present from Kame and a recent addition to the cluster of silver bangles. "I think we should have winged hearts."

"Of course, winged hearts wouldn't be cute at all," Kame said, totally deadpan. He addressed the bridge at large. "While we're out, everyone have a think about how to redesign the comm badges, and we'll have a competition later. Remember, nothing obscene, because we have to wear them in public."

Amidst mutterings of how Kame was a fine one to talk, given his lack of drawing ability, the two captains stepped out into Red Spot Terminal and set out for the food court by mutual unspoken agreement. Replicator fare was all very well, but one did want a bit of variety from time to time.

Red Spot Terminal took the shape of an octagon rather than the conventional circle, with the docking bays lined up around the outer rim. In the event that it became necessary to jettison the docks, each of the eight segments could be manipulated individually. Each had a separate path to the hub, and it was along one of these that Kame and Jin walked.

"Guess someone finally decided to take all the adverts out," Jin said. "I almost miss seeing dozens of posters on the walls, trying to lure me to the theatre."

Kame shook his head. "I don't; I've had enough of musicals for a while. Koki keeps making me play a boxer in a holosuite one with him."

"A boxer doesn't sound so bad..."

"Even one who runs off to join the circus, gets chased by ninja across the rooftops and winds up losing one of his closest friends?"

Jin blinked. "Sorry, did you say this was a _musical_?"

"Forget it."

They were alone in the passage, walls a tastefully bland beige and floor lacking the usual scuff marks. Kame felt almost relieved he'd cleaned his boots earlier that week. The barren expanse of wall was only broken by the directional signs, but since it was necessary to reach the hub before choosing a destination, these had no variety save the occasional change of colour.

"At least the food court's still here," Jin said as they approached the exit. "You can't miss that sign."

True enough. The bright orange and yellow arrows were enough to blind any passerby with their flashing. Jin allowed himself to be momentarily dazzled, but Kame squinted to read the text beneath.

"NEUTRAL ZONE", it read.

\-----

"I don't recognise any of these restaurants," Jin said when they were standing in the middle of the food court, looking for a free table. "You think they've had a change of management?"

"Or a change of eating habits."

Kame scanned the area in search of a familiar eatery. The food court was busy as always, many of the tables occupied by obvious tourists with their 'Core Tours' T-shirts, proud survivors of the wild, breakneck ride through Jupiter's gaseous interior that was one of the major attractions of the system. There were a few courting couples, gazing into each other's eyes while their lunches cooled and congealed, and a handful of families trying to keep small children from tripping anyone carrying a tray.

Two parties stood out. Beneath the blue arches, a group of four men and two women wore severe black and white uniforms and obvious sidearms, keeping a steady watch on a similar party of seven (three male, three female, one indeterminate), also heavily armed but wearing such an assortment of styles and colours that Kame couldn't consider their attire a uniform. They glared at each other across the sea of diners, taking only token mouthfuls of their own food.

Of course, the only free table was between the two groups. Kame groaned inaudibly and steered Jin towards it.

Still there were some benefits, Kame discovered when he sat down. They had an unobstructed view of the giant screens along the dessert wall, one of which was showing half a dozen split-screened sports - including baseball.

"Any preference?" Jin asked.

Kame decided to follow the example of the armed diners. You never knew when you'd have to abandon your plate. "Something uncomplicated."

While Kame guarded the table, Jin located a sandwich place and bought them both lunch, paying in Jovian coin and wondering when it became legal to sell real meat in the station. The ersatz stuff had always been clearly marked, but there was no indication that any of the meat-related sandwich fillings was less than one hundred per cent genuine dead animal.

He threw in a couple of juices, added some napkins to the tray and slowly made his way back to Kame, hoping he wasn't trampling any kids underfoot.

Kame was too distracted by the screens to give Jin more than cursory thanks, but Jin knew well how much his partner loved baseball. It had been Kame's ambition, as a kid, to become a professional baseball player - and he'd been good, too. But lack of money in the family had meant he'd gone straight into work, his own dreams relegated to second place. He was living out some of those dreams now, but he'd always miss baseball, and Jin wished there was something he could do about it.

"Watch the group on the left."

"Huh?" Kame's sudden muttered instruction caught Jin by surprise. "Which group?"

"The one with the itchy trigger fingers."

Jin sneaked a peek. The uniformed party were glaring openly at the others, now, hands twitching over their weapons. "Why do I always end up in firefights at restaurants?"

"You're not the only one. Jin, tell me if that uniform looks familiar to you at all?"

White shirt, black pants and jacket, cuffs rolled up to the elbows the way Kame had... "LIPS?"

Kame nodded. "Maybe. There's a Jovian branch, unless things have changed since I quit. These guys might be part of it."

Lunar/InterPlanetary Security acted as a police force for crimes between the stars of the Sol System, upholding the law wherever lunar or planetary borders were crossed. Kame's career as a LIPS officer had been brief and not particularly satisfying, but it had led him to Jin. Admittedly it had been via a holographic shootout, a tractor beam, a stolen diamond and a drugged-up interrogation that had left Kame stuck with a chair fetish, but still...

Jin smiled around a mouthful of bread. "Maybe the other group are smuggling Trans-Saturnian rum or something."

"It's a good spot to make a deal," Kame said. "Public place, lots of people, decent food...these sandwiches are actually pretty good. Is this real chicken?"

"Yeah, I don't know how long they-"

The remainder of Jin's reply was drowned out by a roar from the table of potential felons. Not, thankfully, a prelude to a gunfight, but to a celebration, as the seven of them began cheering and high-fiving each other. Kame followed their gaze to the screen and discovered why.

"Must be out-of-towners," he said. "Or maybe they just hate the Yankees. You remember me telling you they were beaten lately by the Lunar City Lunatics? Those are highlights from the game."

Jin tried to divide his attention between the screen, his lunch and all the armed diners. It wasn't easy. Good thing he hadn't bought pasta. "That batter in the no.2 jersey - is that the same guy they keep showing? He's amazing!"

"Yeah, same guy. He's obviously the reason for their sudden change of luck." Kame's tone was a mix of awe and envy, with a hint of sadness for what might've been. "Look at that home run!"

Almost everyone at the tables was watching the screen now - and those who weren't were hardcore diners, staring only into their plates, as if the secrets of the universe might be hiding under the next slice of pizza. Jin couldn't be sure, but he thought some of them were drooling, and not over the food.

In the final shot of the clip, no.2 turned to the camera, flashed the crowd a double peace sign, and treated them to a grin so full of warmth and enthusiasm you could've started a fire with it. Half the diners sighed dreamily at the sight.

Kame didn't.

Neither did Jin, but then, he got to see Kame smile like that all the time.

"Why? How?" Kame gasped, lost for words. "Who?"

"You," Jin said quietly. "It's you."

The name on the screen confirmed it. Kamenashi Kazuya. Same kanji, same age, same bright smile.

Live coverage of a low-gravity golf game replaced the baseball highlights and the crowd lost interest in everything but the next mouthful. Kame ignored his lunch, still staring sightlessly at the screen and his own fading ghost.

"Doppelganger?" Jin suggested. "They say everyone in the universe has one."

Jin's voice snapped Kame out of it. "With the exact same name? I don't think so, Jin. What are the odds of that?"

"Better than the odds of you secretly having a career as the star player of a baseball team based on Earth's moon, when we haven't even been near the Sol System in ages!"

"You might have a point," Kame conceded. "Those clips were from a few weeks ago. I couldn't be in two places at once, even if we could increase the _KAT-TUN_ 's teleport range."

"It's not one of your brothers pretending to be you, is it? You guys look pretty similar in your photos."

Kame was beginning to feel sick, and he didn't think the chicken sandwich had anything to do with it. "They're not that good. I'm not even sure _I'm_ that good."

Jin shrugged. "Evidently you are."

"He is."

Both captains turned round to discover one of the brightly-dressed women standing by their table, hand no longer gripping her blaster and enough allure in her smile and deep, dark eyes to make a dead man sit up and take notice.

"He's that good at _everything_ ," she purred. "Aren't you, Kamenashi?"

Jin would've been suspicious, had Kame not been so obviously in the dark as to why this strange woman was reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. There was no mistaking his stunned expression for encouragement, or even recognition.

"Do I know you?" Kame asked hesitantly.

"Don't tell me you've forgotten already." The allure faded slightly. "But I suppose you did drink a lot of wine that night. I'll forgive you."

"That's very kind of you, I'm sure, but who are you?"

Jin wanted to know the same thing. "And why are you cozying up to _my_ Kame?"

"Yours?" The woman arched an eyebrow. "I did hear rumours he'd taken up with some handsome young thing. Do you play baseball too?"

Kame didn't like the way the stranger began appraising Jin, running her eyes over every inch of him and mentally grading his appeal. "Only with me."

"He doesn't bat for my team, then? Pity." Her eyes abandoned Jin mid-leer.

"Hang on a minute!" Jin dropped his protest when Kame elbowed him in the side.

"Don't argue," he muttered to Jin. "Let's not complicate things."

"But there's nothing complicated about this at all, sweetie." Their unwanted guest regarded them with something approaching pity. "You said if I had any more of the good stuff, you wouldn't mind a taste." She lowered her voice. "My friends and I just so happen to have a couple of bottles in our possession...if you're willing to pay. Got milk?"

Kame worked hard to keep the surprise from his face. Jin's casual, offhand comment had been correct - Trans-Saturnian rum smugglers, indeed. Those who drank the wretched stuff craved only three things: more rum, money to buy more rum, and, for reasons known only to the ring-hopping bandits who'd created it in the first place, vast quantities of milk.

"Not interested." Even when he'd been making a career out of flouting the law, he hadn't been one for illegal substances. Legal poisons were safer. "Giving up alcohol. Doctor's orders."

"Oh, I don't think so, honey." Silken tones became steel. "We sealed the deal with a kiss. My friends over there were so looking forward to meeting you."

Jin didn't like the way the aforementioned friends were rising from their chairs, faces grim. "They don't look so delighted about it."

"Your friends will have to settle for scamming someone else," Kame said. "I said I'm not interested."

He picked up his tray, intending to dispose of the contents in the correct bins, but both he and the remains of his lunch were sent flying by a rough hand reaching past to point a blaster at his new acquaintance.

The owner of the hand, Kame noted on his way to meet the floor, had a LIPS insignia pinned to his uniform. Though the officer's face was unfamiliar, his attitude brought back many unpleasant memories. "Tessa, Tessa, Tessa. Didn't you hear me the last time I told you not to do business here?"

Another pair of LIPS officers approached from behind, sandwiching Jin between them when he tried to duck out. "Not without giving us a cut, sweetheart," the shorter of the two said.

One of Tessa's buddies pulled a nerve disruptor from his jacket. "You want your cut, Kumori? You can come right over here and take it."

The nerve disruptor had an immediate effect on everyone who noticed it. Ten seconds later, anyone who could get clear had done so, and the rest had ducked behind counters, overturned tables and potted plants of reasonable girth. No one wanted to be hit by a stray blast from a nerve disruptor. They were illegal for a good reason.

Jin hoped the LIPS officers next to him weren't planning on using him for cover. "Uh...since we're not buying and no one's making any deals, how about you both put your guns down and finish your lunches?"

"Huh?" Kumori seemed surprised to find Jin still there. "Hey, don't you work for Kitagawa?"

"Not anymore, he doesn't." Kame scrambled to his feet, silently apologising to the cleaning staff for leaving his tray on the floor, and pushed through to grab Jin's arm. "And we were just leaving."

"Uh uh." Tessa shook her head. "We had a deal, Kamenashi. Didn't anyone ever teach you not to break your word to a lady?"

The LIPS officers snickered. "She's no lady," Kumori said. "By any definition of the word."

"And for someone who's supposed to uphold the law, you're not exactly a shining example yourself," Nerve Disruptor Guy said.

Kame could've told him LIPS officers were hardly the most upstanding bunch in the universe. "We don't have a deal, I don't know who you are, and I don't want any trouble." He excused himself, beginning a slow retreat.

"I don't like cheats." Tessa's gun came up, aiming straight at Kame.

It was obvious this argument had been going on long before the _KAT-TUN_ had docked at the station. Kame had no intention of sticking around to see who won. "And I don't like getting involved in someone else's fight. Come on, Jin."

Jin had been reaching under his jacket for his own blaster; Kame caught his eye to convince him that this would be a very bad idea. Anyone who happened to be holding a weapon was a potential target. Fortunately for Kame, Tessa never did get to pull the trigger on him - Kumori fired first.

"Whatever you do, don't shoot anyone," Kame muttered as he dragged Jin through a cluster of overturned tables. "I think they've been looking for an excuse to open fire on each other for a long time, and we just provided it."

Jin ducked just in time to avoid an unwanted haircut. "Aren't we nice?"

Shots flew across the food court, separating tables from chairs, straws from sodas, and hungry diners from their lunches. Fear did wonders to cure the appetite, however. Running for one's life generally took priority over finishing those last few spoons of curry.

Stuck in the middle of all this, the two JE Fleet captains attempted to work their way towards the far edge of the food court, hoping to reach the exit to the shopping complex. Fate, better known as the Red Spot Terminal security team, intervened.

Jin _hated_ being stunned.


	3. Chapter 3

Compared to Kurogin orbital prison, the cells in the Red Spot Terminal detention centre were relatively modern - a significant improvement on the last time Jin had been thrown in jail. He hadn't deserved it then, either.

Stunner headaches were starting to become routine. Jin rolled carefully onto his side, hoping not to overshoot the bed, and found his partner staring back at him from the opposite wall.

"Try not to move too fast," Kame said. "If you're sick, I'm not clearing it up." He showed no inclination to make any moves of his own.

"I don't think moving fast is going to be a problem." Jin groaned, temples throbbing, vision blurring round the edges and a faint numbness in his left shoulder where he'd taken the hit. At least it hadn't been the head. "Is it just us in here?"

"Yeah. Local security showed up, started stunning everyone in sight, probably so they could sort us all out afterwards. We get a nice, two-person cell to ourselves until someone comes along and sets us free."

"You hope."

Kame gave him a resigned smile. "It's not like we did anything."

"If they thought we were harmless, they wouldn't have taken our guns."

"You may have a point. Can you get your comm badge to work?"

Jin reached into his shirt pocket, relieved to feel the flat bulldog still pinned inside. The relief lasted only as long as it took him to realise that no matter what he said or did, he couldn't get an answer from the _KAT-TUN_.

Kame's heart sank. "Either our communications array's gone down or we're being jammed. Whichever it is, we're on our own. I hope they're all okay out there."

"They will be." Jin was convinced of this. "They're probably complaining about us right now, and how we denied them all the chance to go barhopping round the station."

"For their own good."

"Of course." Jin rubbed a hand over his eyes, happy to see the stunner tremor fading to the occasional shake. "Can you stand yet?"

"Why, so I can give you a hand up?"

"The thought had crossed my mind."

"Don't be alarmed, it happens to the rest of us all the time."

If Jin was okay to indulge in a spot of bickering, Kame decided his head couldn't be bothering him too much. A sick Akanishi Jin was not the best company, as his crew knew only too well. Kame's own stunner headache wasn't much more than a dull pulse, a lazy rhythm at the back of his mind, sometimes skipping a beat. He could ignore it. He'd been shot in the thigh; the numb patch felt like dead wood to the touch but wouldn't stop him from standing. Not like the time he'd been shot in the ankle, and had spent the next ten hours overbalancing through the sensation that one leg was six inches shorter than the other.

Slow, that was the key. No sudden movements. Kame inched his way towards the edge of the bed till he could plant his feet on the floor. There was no carpet, of course, but the cell wasn't so badly equipped - a tattered but serviceable viewscreen showed a static image of Jupiter's famous Red Spot, there was a semi-private sanitary cubicle (translucent), and the beds were comfortable enough that had he been anywhere else in the universe, Kame might've been reluctant to move.

When sitting up didn't send him reeling, he had a go at standing. Wasn't that hard.

Walking wasn't so easy. One step, two step, three step...and oh dear, that was the floor coming up to meet him, wasn't it?

"You okay down there?"

Kame peered up. Jin was hanging over the edge of the bed, amused but concerned, too. Kame drew himself up to his knees, resting his elbows on Jin's mattress. "I don't see you offering to help."

"No point in both of us hitting the deck, is there?" Jin flopped over on his back again. "I'm going to give it a few minutes."

Five minutes came and went. Jin's eyes closed; Kame wondered if he was going to sleep. The timing couldn't have been worse. Someone was approaching their door, and quickly.

He poked Jin in the arm to rouse him. "We've got company coming. Try to look helpless and appealing."

"Would you settle for 'dazed and confused'?"

"Close enough."

Kame turned round to wait. There was a faint beep from outside and the door slid open to reveal the newly-promoted Lieutenant Nakamaru Yuichi, the _KAT-TUN_ 's resident hotshot pilot and beatboxer extraordinaire, in uniform for possibly the first time in his life. Kame could've kissed him.

"This is one time I don't mind you walking in on us," Jin said. "Where'd you get the uniform?"

Nakamaru stared, clearly puzzled. "Station supply, same as the rest of the unit. Where did you get the weird weapons?" He held out their blasters.

If that was Nakamaru's idea of a joke, Jin didn't think it was very funny. He giggled anyway, because their pilot was keeping such a straight face. "Arashi, of course."

"The talent agency? Oh!" Nakamaru caught on. "Of course! They're fashion accessories. That's why they don't fire - they're not real guns."

Kame wasn't sure what was going on here - maybe there were bugs in the cell and Nakamaru was worried about being overheard - but he wasn't going to argue about the gene-coded locks on the triggers, not when Nakamaru was holding them both out. The stunner was missing, though. Kame thought he might have dropped it in the confusion. He took his own, leaving Jin to pull himself up and do the same.

The effects of the stun had lessened enough that Jin was able to sit up with barely a flutter of giddiness; if his hand shook as he tucked the blaster under his jacket, he was the only one who knew. "Let's go, shall we? We're not in any trouble, right?"

Nakamaru gave them both a reassuring smile. "Not this time. We've checked the recording of the brawl and the guilty parties have all been identified. It's been left to me to go round and release everyone who was stunned incidentally." He rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed. "You guys are being a lot nicer about it than the LIPS guys in the opposite cell."

"The LIPS officers are locked up too?" Kame rose, propping himself up against the wall.

Nakamaru shrugged. "It was a designated neutral zone; they knew the penalty for opening fire. There were kids trying to eat their lunches in there."

Kame and Jin made vague noises of agreement that this was unacceptable. Nakamaru's datband drowned them out with a high-pitched squeal. Everyone winced.

"Got to get that thing fixed." Nakamaru ducked out the door. "Excuse me a second, will you?"

The door remained open. Jin glanced at Nakamaru talking earnestly into the datband round his wrist, and whispered his unease to Kame. "That wasn't the one he was wearing this morning, was it? Who's he talking to?"

"Somebody we don't know - and that worries me." Kame tiptoed across to the door for a listen.

"I'm almost finished here," Nakamaru said. "I'm just releasing the last two now." He had his back to the door, so the reply was muffled, but Kame could hear Nakamaru's response clearly enough. "No, I'm finishing early tonight. The chief says it's okay - I've got my intergalactic science exam tomorrow and you know I need all the extra study time I can get!"

Exam? Kame had a very bad feeling about this. Infiltrating the local security force to spring your captains from the detention centre was one thing, but it sounded like Nakamaru had actually joined up. Moreover, had gone so far as to sign himself up for an exam and have a comfortable working relationship with his colleagues. Which left Kame with the question: was it really Nakamaru at all?

He was so preoccupied he didn't notice Jin sneaking up to join him. "Well, Kame? Was Nakamaru secretly brainwashed while we were eating lunch?"

Kame didn't have an answer for him. "There's something very weird happening here." He drew them both back from the door as Nakamaru began to turn around, conversation over. "Follow my lead, okay?"

"But-"

"Jin, for once in your life don't argue. _Please._."

Jin rolled his eyes. It wasn't as if he always argued, and Kame never complained about the fun they had making up afterwards, but truth be told, he shared Kame's wariness. Nakamaru was doing a wonderful job of pretending he didn't know them at all; Jin wasn't sure it was even pretense.

"Sorry about the interruption," Nakamaru said. "I just need the two of you to sign a statement and you're free to leave."

"A statement?" Kame said.

Nakamaru whipped out a datapad and stylus and presented them to Kame. "Standard release procedure. You know, to confirm that we stunned you but did not touch you beyond that. It stops people trying to sue us for injuries they supposedly received while detained. And if you could just confirm that you've recovered fully and had your property returned - yes, that's it, just sign here, please."

Kame skimmed the contents of the screen, which didn't appear to deviate from Nakamaru's description. He took the stylus and carefully signed his name, making sure Jin could see exactly what he'd written.

'Shinkame Kazuma', the name he'd used for the wedding in Eros City and the one on the marriage certificate he still carried with him.

If Jin was surprised, he kept it to himself, following Kame's lead and writing 'Akasei Jinpachi'. He handed the datapad back to Nakamaru, who seemed disappointed by their signatures.

"I thought you were Kamenashi Kazuya," he said to Kame. "You know, the baseball player? I was going to ask for an autograph. You look just like him!"

"People tell me that all the time." Kame smiled apologetically. "I think it's the hair."

Jin was dying to ask questions but he played along, allowing himself to be escorted from the detention centre and deposited at the entrance to the food court with a voucher for one free meal as a 'sorry we stunned you, better luck next time' gift from station security. When Nakamaru walked away without so much as a backwards glance, Jin decided he'd had enough of holding his tongue.

"What was that all about?"

"I didn't want the next news broadcast with my name to be about me getting thrown into detention during a brawl." Kame pocketed his own meal voucher, slipping it inside his wallet with the marriage certificate, IDs, and samples of various currencies. "I don't know what's going on here but I think we'd better be getting back to the ship, don't you?"

"Shouldn't we have gone with Nakamaru?"

Kame brushed his fingers against Jin's; Jin caught them for a moment and squeezed. At least Kame felt real, even if nothing else did.

"I'm not sure that's _our_ Nakamaru," Kame said, quiet but firm. "He doesn't work here any more than I'm star player for the Lunar City Lunatics."

The walk back to the docking bays took longer than either man would've liked, involving a great deal of looking over shoulders while trying to appear inconspicuous. They didn't talk. Jin kept tapping his comm badge, trying to raise the ship now that they were out of the detention centre. Kame didn't even bother to try, not when Jin's muttered obscenities told him exactly how futile it would be.

They reached Docking Bay 94 at last. Kame went to press his thumb to the door panel, caught the name on the wall monitor, and almost had a heart attack.

"That's not the _KAT-TUN_." Jin appreciated he was stating the obvious.

"We've got the right bay, haven't we?" Kame doublechecked the name and number. Nope, still the _'Happy Wanderer'_ , Docking Bay 94. "Maybe I'm dreaming. Jin, pinch me."

Jin obliged.

Kame swatted his hand away. "Not there! I enjoy being able to sit down, thanks."

"You don't suppose we registered under a false name, do you?"

"I know we didn't - I checked the door on the way out."

Unsure what to do next, Jin began checking the ship names on neighbouring bays, hoping they'd simply misremembered the number. Kame pulled out his datapad to see if he could connect to the station's information network. After three tries, it allowed him to log in as a guest. The list of ships docked at Red Spot Terminal was always public, as the governor felt being open and straightforward was the best way to prevent organised crime in his domain, and it didn't take Kame long to find it.

The _KAT-TUN_ wasn't on the list.

He tapped his comm badge on a reflex, tried to raise the ship. Still silent. He caught up to his partner.

"Uh, Jin? I think we have a problem." He showed Jin the list.

"They've gone without us? But..."

Kame shook his head. "There's no way they could've left and been replaced by another ship so quickly. We weren't out _that_ long. And look at the times next to each ship! I think..."

"What?" Jin usually enjoyed seeing Kame blush (especially when he was the cause) but this time it alarmed him rather than charmed him.

"Promise you won't think I'm crazy?"

"Sanity's vastly overrated. I promise, okay?"

Kame wouldn't meet his eyes. "I think they were never here in the first place."

Jin's first impulse was to ask Kame if he was still suffering the effects of the stun. But he'd promised to take him seriously, no matter how ludicrous the idea sounded. "Okay," he said slowly, "then how did we get here? You're not going to tell me we didn't arrive on the _KAT-TUN_ , are you?"

"No, I..." Kame held his head in his hands. "The ship was here, and then we left, and then the ship wasn't here anymore and it was as if it had never arrived."

"That's-"

"Crazy? Yeah, I know. Crazier than me having a doppelganger who plays baseball for Lunar City Major? Crazier than Nakamaru having one who works in station security and studies for intergalactic science exams in his spare time?"

"When you put it that way..." Jin's stunner-induced headache was threatening to put in a reappearance; based on Kame's pained expression, his was doing the same. "You think there's another me running around here somewhere?"

"That LIPS officer thought you were still working for Kitagawa - maybe he knows one."

Jin hoped not. He'd run away from the old man's organisation at the tender age of twenty, not knowing what was going to happen to him but not wanting to watch himself become someone he could neither respect nor like. If, nearly a decade on, he'd still been living in Tokyo and working for the Kitagawas, what kind of man would he have become? A cheap thug, capable only of intimidation and violence? A devious sneak, worming his way into positions of power and influence in order to feed intelligence to his bosses?

"Come on." Kame interrupted his melancholy train of thought by tapping him on the shoulder. "I think I need a drink."

\-----

Fifteen minutes later they were parked at a corner table, with a beer for Jin and a glass of red wine for Kame, watching the bar fill up. It was still early but the lights were turned down low, possibly to protect the reputations of those mid-afternoon drinkers. Jin had paid in cash. He wasn't sure his cards would even work anymore.

"Thanks for the wine." Kame took a sip and smiled. "The rest of the universe might be going to pieces but there's nothing wrong with the food and drink."

"Good, I'd hate to starve to death before we get home."

"If we could only figure out where "home" is..."

"You mean the ship, right?" Jin didn't think Kame was referring to Earth. That, he hoped, was still where they'd left it.

"Yeah. If they disappeared when we left, and we can't contact them now...do they still exist?"

"Maybe they're trying to contact us and wondering the same thing?" Jin slumped down on the cold leather seat. "This is too weird."

"But it's not the only strange thing that's happened lately." Suddenly enthused, Kame pulled out his datapad and began making a list. "Nobody contacted us once we'd left the Sol System; the Lunar City Lunatics broke a three-century losing streak-"

"Because they had you playing for them."

"-and this other me might be mixed up with smugglers; Nakamaru here works in station security and is studying intergalactic science; either Arashi are a genuine talent agency or nobody knows otherwise; Red Spot Terminal now has neutral zones and serves real meat in the food court-"

"Wait a minute." Jin held up his hand to interrupt Kame's muttered list. "Nakamaru _here_? Where do you think we are, exactly? Some parallel universe?"

Kame shrugged. "Why not? We've got doppelgangers here, and it would explain why some things are different. Need another beer?"

"Yes, but I'm afraid to drink one. Not that things can possibly get any stranger..."

"Don't be too sure of that." Kame pointed to the viewscreen hanging over the bar, where a commercial had just begun for the annual Saturnian billiards tournament, due to start in less than a fortnight. The big name players each got a portrait and profile shot; judging by the size of the fonts used, Taguchi Junnosuke was the heavy favourite to win.

"He's not blond anymore."

"Maybe he never was, in this universe." Kame added this latest development to his list. _Junno likely to win annual Saturnian billiards tournament._

Jin plucked the datapad and stylus from Kame's hands and added a note of his own. _Place bet if the opportunity arises._ "What? I'm just being supportive of our crew."

"Our crew who don't even know we exist," Kame pointed out. "Nakamaru didn't have a clue who we were; I doubt the others would be any different. That's what makes me think things changed around _us_ , rather than that they left the ship against orders and got caught up here too."

"Things were going weird before we left the ship, though." Jin longed to be able to seek sanctuary at the bottom of a beer bottle and emerge three days later when the universe would hopefully have restored itself to rights, but that wasn't an option. "Why would it suddenly have disappeared when we left the docking bay?"

Kame gave him a hopeless grin. "I have no idea. I'm pretty certain we're not going to figure it out by sitting in a bar, though."

"You were the one who said he needed a drink."

"I was hoping the alcohol would give me a revelation." Kame clambered out from behind the table. "All it gave me was a full bladder. I'll be back in a minute." He started to head for the men's room.

Jin watched him walk for all of three seconds before following. He couldn't explain why, when Kame asked, but he felt it would be a bad idea for the two of them to split up. At the food court, they'd at least been able to keep each other in sight, but Jin had the feeling that if Kame left the room, they weren't going to find each other again.

The elderly gentleman washing his hands in the corner gave them a peculiar look. Jin gave him a glare in return and sent him scurrying for the exit.

"He probably thought we were in here for a little fun," Kame said.

"I can't think of any situation less likely to put me in the mood. You realise we're now homeless?"

"Temporarily. We'll work something out."

"Something" turned out to be a cheap hotel room, with a pull-down double bed and a tiny bathroom, carpet threadbare and wallpaper peeling in the corners. Nothing like the last hotel they'd stayed in, but their supply of cash was limited and neither of them dared try their cards. The owner had given them a discount when Kame had produced the marriage certificate and explained that they were on their honeymoon. She'd been sceptical - who would choose to honeymoon there, after all, and so long after the wedding - but she hadn't asked for any form of ID, and that suited them just fine.

The room had a plug and cable, so Kame plugged in his datapad to recharge. He didn't know when he'd have another chance. Jin's was back on the _KAT-TUN_.

"What now?"

Having pulled the bed down from the wall and arranged the bedding to his satisfaction, Kame had kicked off his boots and was trying to find a comfortable position on the mattress. "Now we think about this calmly and don't panic."

Jin followed suit, hugging a pillow to his chest. "Can we at least have panic available as an option?"

"Later. We can either give up, become gibbering wrecks, and lose all hope of seeing our friends again, or we can work out how this happened and what we can do to fix it."

"Fix the universe. Sure, why not?"

"I knew you'd see it my way."

When Kame was determined to do something, he did it, regardless of the cost. Some days it just wasn't worth Jin's while to argue with him. What were two JE Fleet captains supposed to do in a situation like this? They hadn't had much training, once they'd joined up, but even if they'd followed proper procedure Jin was sure there was nothing in the manuals that covered this.

"Of course there wouldn't be anything in the manuals," Kame said. "Think about holovids instead. Fiction, not fact. We must've seen hundreds about parallel universes."

"Yeah, and all of them had some sort of explanation for how they got there. What did we do? Left Venus, took off from the Sol System altogether to go shopping in Alpha Centauri, swung by Barnard's Star to try out every restaurant in the system..."

"Hmm..." Kame began humming to himself, a tune Jin thought he recognised from a very old magical girl series. "Do you remember that shopping complex orbiting Alpha Cen A? I must've spent hours in there."

"Days. Would've been weeks if I hadn't lured you out with the offer of a pedicure."

Kame laughed and wiggled his toes. "That wasn't the only service you offered, as I recall."

"Well, I am quite hard to resist."

"Modest, aren't you? But I can't imagine anyone ever turning you down, Jin."

"You'd be surprised."

Jin thought back to his days sharing a room with Yamapi, both of them working for old man Kitagawa, never dreaming they'd both leave and one day wind up on the same side again. Often they'd used but one bed, first as terrified kids clinging together in the dark and whispering their secret fears, then as hormonal young men, helping each other grow up, exploring those feelings they didn't know how to explain.

But although the love remained, passion waned over time, once Yamapi had developed a planet-sized crush on JE Fleet Admiral Takizawa Hideaki - a captain, Takki had been back then - and Jin's advances had been met by gentle rebuffs. Jin didn't regret the transition. He'd probably never have run away by himself - never met Kame, never fallen in love.

Never been betrayed, never had his heart broken, never been knocked out by that stupid shockstick...okay, perhaps there were some negatives too. Jin didn't care about those things anymore.

"What's with the sappy smile?"

Jin shuffled closer to his partner, moved in so he could feel Kame's warmth through his clothes. "Just thinking about how lucky I am."

"We're in some strange, alternate universe with no clue how we got here or how to get home, and you feel lucky?"

"Because we're _together_ in some strange, alternate universe."

"That's true." Kame's left hand sought Jin's right. "I guess if either of us were here alone, we'd be in pieces right now."

"And still in that bar, buried up to our necks in empties."

Kame didn't deny that the two of them had a fondness for alcohol, one they shared with most of the fleet. As vices went, they could do far worse. Like that security guard at the bank who'd...no, wait...

"I think I know where it started."

"Where what started?"

"The split, whatever you want to call it." Kame sat up, too agitated to keep still, pulling Jin up with him; he'd have stood if Jin's grip on his hand hadn't kept him anchored to the bed. "I think I know where it started.

"And if I'm right, it's my fault."


	4. Chapter 4

"How can it be your fault?" Jin said. "Breaking the universe would be pretty impressive, even for you."

"I don't know exactly. But I know when the first weird thing happened. It didn't make much of an impression on me at the time. Now..."

Jin released Kame's hand and reached for the bag of popcorn he'd picked up on the way in. His argument was that if you were going to discuss such grand issues as setting the universe to rights, you needed sustenance, and the convenience store next to the hotel had reasonable prices. He offered some to Kame.

Food was the farthest thing from Kame's mind - though clearly not from his stomach, as he accepted a handful on autopilot. "I remembered when you mentioned Alpha Centauri. That shopping complex - do you remember when I left you all in that accessory shop for an hour?"

"Vividly. You don't want to know how many necklaces Koki made us look at. I thought you were never coming back from the pet shop."

"I...uh...didn't go to look at puppies," Kame admitted. "I went to the bank."

"Wasn't there an ATM right next door, though? If you needed cash, you could've used that."

"I didn't go for money, Jin." Kame wasn't sure how to explain the next bit. He'd never told anyone, not even his partner, what he'd done with Kizuna. They'd agreed, years ago, that the diamond was Kame's now - he'd paid a higher price for it than any of them. "Remember that job we pulled five years ago, hitting the delegates at Proxima Centauri? Before the convention got started, I took a shuttle to pick up supplies."

Jin had vivid memories of that too. "We were out of coffee. How did we ever manage before we got a ship with a replicator?"

Kame refrained from pointing out that the first ship they'd ever had with replicators was actually the _KAT-TUN_ , which some idiot back on Earth had decided to entrust to Jin, probably in a fit of madness. No doubt they were regretting it now.

"While I was out getting groceries, I stopped at the bank to stash something in a safety deposit box. I wanted...I'm not sure. I think I wanted to keep the Kizuna diamond somewhere safe, far from us so I'd always have something to go back to. Does that make any sense?"

"You left the diamond at the bank?" Jin had occasionally wondered what had become of it; he hadn't seen it much after the six of them had left Lunar City Major together. Kame had kept it in a box, tucked away inside his favourite baseball penant. Jin knew Kame hadn't taken it with him when he ran out on them, but he hadn't realised the diamond had been moved years before that.

"Yeah. I had it with me at the time, and it seemed like a good idea. I used to carry it around, sometimes - almost like taking a pet for a walk, I guess. It was the butterfly wings."

The Kizuna diamond was so named because of a small flaw in the centre, shaped like a pair of entwined rings - a bond; these rings were set at an angle, giving them the appearance of a pair of wings. The overall effect was that of a butterfly trapped in crystal, wings frozen in place for all time.

"I left it there for years," Kame continued. "I didn't go near Alpha Centauri again till our recent trip."

"Did you take it out again?"

"No, just went to see it was still there. I must've been staring at it for ages, because the next thing I knew the security guard was calling down to me and asking if everything was all right."

Jin figured he couldn't mock Kame for losing himself, staring into the heart of the diamond - it wasn't as if hadn't done similar things. Yamapi used to give him Magic Eye pictures just to watch his reaction. But the one and only time Jin had looked - really, truly looked - at Kizuna, he thought he'd seen the rings, wings, whatever they were...thought he'd seen them move. He'd restricted himself to quick glances after that.

"Okay, so what was this weird thing you're talking about? Was something strange about the diamond?"

"Not the diamond." Kame took another handful of popcorn. "The security guard. When he let me in, he was reading a magazine with Captain Kimura on the front."

That didn't surprise Jin in the slightest. Kimura Takuya, one of the most famous (and indeed, infamous) officers of the JE Fleet, had never risen beyond the rank of captain because he had a far more lucrative side career as a holovid star, becoming a favourite all over the universe and sometimes playing himself in dramatisations of his own missions. His picture regularly graced magazine covers.

"Captain Kimura's all over the place," Jin said. "Nothing weird about that."

"It was the May issue of 'Star Studded' and he was in full dress uniform. I know this because the guard insisted on showing me every last picture and describing to me in great detail exactly what he wanted to do with the good captain."

"Charming."

"Isn't it just? On my way out, he was reading the same issue...but Kimura was in a suit."

"Must've been a different magazine."

"Oh, it was definitely the same one. The guard was waving it right in my face and describing his fantasies all over again. Only..."

Kame threw the remaining popcorn in his hand into the bin in the corner. He wasn't sure any of it would make it past the lump in his throat.

"Only?" Jin prompted.

"Only he wasn't calling him 'Captain Kimura' when I came out. It was 'Mr. Kimura'. The cover didn't mention the JE Fleet anymore, either."

Jin clutched his useless comm badge in despair. While he was by no means the most dedicated man in the JE Fleet, the thought of its loss upset him more than he cared to think about. "Do you think it's...gone? The JE Fleet?"

"If it exists, it's doing so without us, Jin."

"What about the rest of the United Solar Navy? I mean, that's just Earth's contribution, there's a lot more to it than that."

"How should I know!" Kame began pacing, repeating those same handful of steps between the back wall and the door over and over again while Jin watched him silently. "Sorry," he said after he'd banged his knee on the bed for the second time, "I didn't mean to yell at you. But don't ask me questions I can't possibly know the answer to, because that really doesn't help."

"Then can I borrow your datapad? We can just look it up." Jin was moving before Kame had even answered. Leaving the datapad plugged in, he quickly ran a search on the USN. All he got was the Universal Sports Network and an advert for the local branch of Ultra Slinky Negligee.

"I didn't know your tastes ran that way," Kame said, peering over Jin's shoulder at the tiny picture of a barely-there bra, "but I'm not sure you've got much to fill one. Yamapi, maybe..."

 _Yamapi._ Jin dropped both the datapad and his jaw; Kame only caught these first of these.

"I was only joking, Jin."

"Yamapi." Jin pulled himself back together. "If there's no USN, there's no JE Fleet. If there's no JE Fleet, Yamapi couldn't have joined. He couldn't have tried to contact us when we went AWOL because we weren't! Aren't, even!"

"This isn't quite where I pictured my career going..."

Just to make sure, Jin checked the local network for maps of the Red Spot Terminal, looking to see what had become of the tiny USN base. "The local USN base looks like a LIPS building now," he told Kame. "And they've got a secondary one round the other side."

"They must have a bigger presence here now, then. Maybe they've taken over protection of the Sol System, who knows?"

"You could join up again," Jin suggested.

If looks could kill, Jin would have been nothing but space dust. "I've had enough of LIPS for one lifetime, thanks," Kame said. "The me in this universe is obviously very happy playing professional baseball, just the way I always wanted."

"And he got that way somewhere between you going into the bank and you coming out of it again. How can looking at a diamond change the universe?" Jin was completely mystified.

Kame, unhappily, wasn't. "When you start talking to it about your childhood dreams of playing baseball and lose all track of time."

"You talk to jewels?"

"You should see what Ueda talks to. It wasn't, like, a conversation or anything; I didn't expect it to talk back. But I had it wrapped in a penant and that made me feel all nostalgic, so..."

"And you think Kizuna did something? Kame, it's a diamond, not a magic genie. You wanting to play baseball doesn't mean you suddenly get to rearrange the universe for your own benefit."

"I didn't do it on purpose but it's the only thing that makes sense. Things started changing from that moment and I don't think it's all one massive coincidence."

"Fine." Jin preferred the straightforward approach anyway. If it was all a coincidence, he didn't think there was anything they could do to fix it. "Then all we have to do is go to back to that bank in Alpha Centauri, you talk to the diamond and ask it to make everything normal again."

"If it's still there." Kame collapsed on the bed again - carefully, because he wasn't sure it would survive otherwise - closed his eyes, and groaned. "The diamond was there in the first place because I put it there - after we stole the _Yunaka_ back from LIPS, after Koki and Nakamaru had stolen the diamond from Earth to start with. If none of that's happened..."

"Not everything changed at once, though. It isn't as if everyone else disappeared the instant you left the ship or they'd have gone weeks ago. The changes must be gradual...and centred around you, I guess."

"Everyone else has changed except..." Kame didn't need to finish his sentence. He knew Jin understood. "Don't leave me," he whispered fiercely. "Ever."

Jin bit back a retort about how Kame was usually the one doing the leaving, and found better things to do with his mouth. The two of them couldn't stay joined at the lips forever but it was comforting to touch, to hold and be held, and forget for a moment that they were very, very far from home and everyone they loved.

"Want to see how much the bed can take?" Kame suggested with a wink.

"No," Jin said firmly. "You told me once that you wanted kids and in this universe, maybe you're supposed to have them. I don't want to wake up tomorrow and find myself pregnant!"


	5. Chapter 5

It was all very well saying that they had to go to Alpha Centauri when they had their own ship, but since they were now without transport, Kame and Jin were forced to find other means of travelling to different galaxies. After freshening themselves up as best they could in the hotel room - sharing a shower was no longer a matter of fun but of life and death - and making use of their free meal vouchers for a hasty breakfast at the food court, they turned their attention to the business of leaving Red Spot Terminal.

"Next passenger ship to Alpha Centauri doesn't leave till next week," Kame said, reading aloud from his datapad. "There's not much call for it right now; must be the off-season."

"We don't have enough cash to rent one, either." The state of their finances was causing Jin no end of grief. "We've maybe got enough to rent a shuttle, but nothing with a hyperdrive."

"Then we've got two choices. Either we risk trying our cards, or we steal a ship." Kame tried to think through the implications. In addition to cards under their real names, they had a couple of aliases each. "If we use our cards, we're trying to access bank accounts we set up years ago - accounts that might not exist now."

"But they're in names that do exist - at least, your real one does. Mine's probably wanted for larceny or something, if he's still around."

"Con artists or thieves, huh?" Kame grinned, thinking back. "Feels just like old times."

That little thrill of excitement was coming back to Jin, reminding him of all the things they used to do before going straight. There was something exhilarating about walking outside the law. "Which do you want to try?"

"The question you should be asking is: is there anything around here worth stealing?"

The answer to Kame's question was not easily found. The docking bays in Red Spot Terminal had full, windowless doors, as opposed to the expandable saloon-style doors that allowed passersby to see the ships inside. Only the ship name and date of entry was public knowledge - classification and condition were the business of no one but the owners.

"If we hang around the docks much longer someone's bound to get suspicious," Jin said after receiving his tenth curious look from one of the ship-owners. "They probably think we're bandits."

"Or rent boys." Kame didn't seem too bothered about this, but then, he was the one with the painted nails. "You don't have your electronic lock pick on you, by any chance?"

"Didn't think I'd need it - not to go to lunch."

"Then we're not getting to see any of these ships without chatting to the owners. Let's see how far our cards will get us."

They decided to start small. Miniature, in fact. Kame attempted to buy a pack of gum with one of the cards he held in his own name, knowing full well that even if it turned out to be the most expensive gum in the universe, he had sufficient funds in the account to cover it.

The girl behind the counter almost fainted with excitement. "Oh my God! Kamenashi Kazuya! Can you have my autograph? Uh..." Her cheeks flushed the same scarlet as her uniform. "I mean, can I have your autograph?" She held out a copy of Sports Illustrated, where a feature on Kame occupied the bulk of the pages.

Jin ducked behind a rack of sweet rolls to hide his giggles. The pictures were pretty nice, from what he could see. Maybe he could talk Kame into buying a copy if his card worked.

"Uh...sure." Kame took the proffered pen and scrawled his name next to the glossiest picture. He hoped his signature wasn't different in this universe, else he was liable to be arrested for impersonating himself. "Sorry about the card; I'm all out of change."

The still-blushing girl rang up the gum, swiped Kame's card, and frowned. "That's weird. Let me try that again."

Kame smiled nervously. It didn't sound like the transaction was going to work. He looked around the store for security but the only other person in there was Jin, gazing longingly at the baked goods.

"I'm really sorry, Mr. Kamenashi, but there must be a problem with the system or something because it's declined your card." The girl spoke so fast Kame had trouble following her apology. "It happens all the time, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with your account. You know what? Just take the gum. It's on me."

Declined. Wonderful. Kame's stomach tightened with dread, like he was back at Planet Disney with Jin dragging him on every rollercoaster in the park. "Ah, it's okay. I'm trying to quit anyway." He returned the card to his wallet.

"Try mine?"

Kame jumped. He hadn't noticed Jin sneaking up behind him but there he was, smiling amicably at the assistant and holding out his own card - the one under his real name, Kame noted.

Two minutes later, they were chewing gum outside the store. "I don't get it," Kame said. "Why did yours work?"

"My account...um..." Jin rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed, "I set it up when I was working for old man Kitagawa. It's been open since long before I signed up with the JE Fleet. I thought maybe it would still be active, if the me here is still working for him."

A quick check at the nearest ATM - Jin's fingerprints served to identify him - revealed that the Akanishi Jin in this universe had not only kept the account but was making the kind of money holovid stars could only dream about.

"I think we can afford a ship," Kame said gleefully. "Or ten."

Jin wanted to share his partner's joy, but he knew what that bank balance meant. You didn't get that kind of cash by playing errand boy and shaking down store owners for protection money all your life. This was the real deal, the end of the line, what you did when you had the old man's ear and you did whatever he wanted because he owned you, body and soul.

"Kame, if we ever run into the other me..."

"He might be annoyed next time he checks his bank account." Kame shrugged carelessly. "Well, if he's anything like you, we can probably talk him round."

"I don't think he's anything like me." Jin became painfully aware of the blaster tucked under his jacket. "I think his bank account's full of blood money."

\-----

There wasn't much Kame could say to reassure Jin that no matter how screwed up this universe was, his other self couldn't possibly be a paid killer. The other explanations were no better. He turned his attention to more practical matters instead, such as finding them a ship. Buying and outfitting their own would take too long to be practical - if they wanted to spend that kind of time, they could wait till next week for the first passenger flight - which left them with the option of renting.

"Nothing with less than a Class 8 hyperdrive." Jin was very insistent on this point. "I'd like to get there before next year."

"That narrows our options." Kame scrolled through the list of ships for rent. "None of these rentals have anything better than a Class 4. We'll have to try talking to the owners after all, see if any of them would be willing to fly us out there for a fee."

"I'm not hanging around the docks again - people keep trying to pick me up."

"They couldn't possibly afford you," Kame said. "Let's see what our local bartender has to say."

They returned to the bar nearest the docks, where the bartender recognised them from the previous afternoon. "Got a taste for wine?" he asked Kame. "We've just received a new delivery of wines from Earth, all from the twentieth century. Have you ever sampled wine that's over a thousand years old, son?"

Kame was intrigued but opted out on financial grounds. Wine that old was bound to cost a fortune, and the only fortune they had available right now belonged to someone else. "Another time, perhaps. We're looking for a lift, not a drink."

"A lift?" The bartender raised an eyebrow. "Where to?"

"Alpha Centauri."

"That's an awful long way to travel. There's an agency next to the food court can book you in on one of the passenger ships next week, if you're not in a rush."

"We're in a rush." Kame and Jin spoke simultaneously, making the bartender smile.

"Well, I guess you could give the fella in the corner a try. He takes passengers sometimes, provided he's interested in wherever they want to go - and if you give him a sad enough story, he'll be interested. He might look like a guy you wouldn't want to meet on a dark night but he's got a good heart."

Jin peered at the table in the corner and spotted a very familiar face. "Koki!"

"Yep, that's the one. Tanaka Koki. Got himself a nice Gazelle - quick little thing, she is."

"Quick?" Jin's ears pricked up. The ship class threw him slightly - he was used to the feline nomenclature - but it had to be a sign that the bartender was directing them to Koki, of all people.

Kame, too, considered it a fortuitous omen. He thanked the bartender, promised to return for wine if he should ever inherit a fortune, and drew Jin off towards Koki's table. This was going to be strange, he knew, pretending to meet one of their closest friends for the first time.

Koki was slouched in a corner seat, eyes closed and ring-covered fingers tapping the table in time to the beat from his earphones. Kame was amused to see the 'JOKER' printed on his jacket sleeve - clearly, some things never changed.

"Uh...Mr. Tanaka?" he said.

Koki ignored him.

"He can't hear you." Jin dropped into the seat opposite Koki and began drumming a pattern of his own, knowing Koki would feel the vibrations across the table.

It worked. Koki opened angry eyes, displeased with the intrusion; Jin plastered his friendliest smile on his face and hoped he wasn't about to get shot by his own head of Security.

Kame squeezed himself alongside Jin and tried again. "Mr. Tanaka? I'm...um...Shinkame Kazuma, and this is Akasei Jinpachi. The bartender said you might be able to help us."

Koki removed his earphones, leaning across the table to take a good look at Kame. "Hey, you look just like-"

"I know," Kame interrupted. "People tell me that all the time. But I'm better looking."

"Much better looking," Jin said.

"Oh." Koki sat back, disappointed. "I was going to ask for your autograph for my kid brother. What do you want, Mr. Shinkami?"

"Shinkame," Kame corrected. "Just call me 'Kame'. We're trying to get to Alpha Centauri and we hear you're willing to take passengers?"

"Alpha Centauri? There's commercial flights going there all the time; why not take one of them?"

"Because we're in a hurry," Jin said, letting the faintest hint of urgency slip into his voice. "We need a fast ship and we're prepared to pay."

Kame mentally crossed his fingers that Koki wouldn't think they were on the lam, what with Jin suggesting ever so delicately that they were being chased. The Koki they knew wouldn't have had a problem with giving two felons a ride, being one himself, but there was no telling with this guy.

He remembered the advice they'd been given: tell a sad story. "It's my niece," he said. "She's having a heart transplant in a few days and I want to be there when she wakes up. She's only seven and..." He trailed off, apparently overcome with emotion.

Jin played along, wrapping a comforting arm around Kame's shoulders. "We didn't get the message till late last night; she's been on the waiting list for months. Now it's finally happening, we have to be there for her." He blinked back tears - real ones, because one of the first lessons Jin had learned as a child was how to make people feel sorry for him and buy him candy to cheer him up.

It worked a charm on Koki, who melted like chocolate in the sun. He screwed up his face, rubbing away tears with his sleeve, then looked Kame straight in the eyes. "I will definitely get you there in time. That little girl needs her uncle and her-" he stopped and looked blankly at Jin.

"Uncle by marriage," Jin said, squeezing Kame tighter for emphasis - just in case Koki had any ideas about comforting the distraught bachelor uncle.

Kame seized Koki's right hand with both of his for a heartfelt "Thank you!" He bowed over their clasped hands. There was time enough to enlighten Koki later, once they'd actually reached Alpha Centauri and Kame was forced to explain why they were going not to a hospital but an orbital shopping complex. Somehow, he didn't think Koki would feel so inclined to convey them if he knew Kame wanted to talk to a diamond. Insane passengers didn't usually pay up.

"Give me half an hour and we can go," Koki said. "I've already got the _Sakura_ fueled up and supplied."

"Already?" Kame said. He released Koki's hand.

"Promised I'd give a friend a ride after his exam this morning. He should be finished in about five minutes."

An exam? No, it would be too much of a coincidence...or would it? "Is your friend taking an intergalactic science exam?" Jin asked.

"Yeah, how'd you know? He's got a couple of weeks booked off from work to recover, so he asked if we could go somewhere."

"Sorry if we're spoiling your plans," Kame said.

Koki shrugged. "We didn't have a destination in mind. Nakamaru won't mind taking a trip to Alpha Centauri; he's never been out of the Milky Way before.

Kame and Jin attempted to elbow each other at the same time and wound up knocking sharp corners together. They got the message, painful though it was. Maybe the universe as they knew it had changed, but some things were written in the stars.


	6. Chapter 6

Nakamaru, when he met them outside Docking Bay 223, also believed some things were inevitable. "I knew I'd run into the two of you again," he said. "Mr. Akasei here has trouble written all over his face."

"Oi, you're not on duty now," Koki said. "How was the exam?"

"I spent a long time revising; I think I did well. I mean, I hope I did well. The course covered a lot of ground." Nakamaru smiled nervously. "It doesn't really matter if I don't pass, but I'd like to and-"

Koki cut him off. "You've passed. Nobody who spent as long as you did poring over study material could possibly fail. Ready for your first trip to another galaxy?"

"I might be if you told me where we were going..."

After Koki had expressed his surprise at their lack of luggage ("Stolen from our hotel room," Kame explained, eliciting yet more sympathy from their kindhearted pilot) and arranged payment ("I hate to talk about money at a time like this, but have you seen the cost of hyperdrive fuel lately?"), Kame and Jin, with Nakamaru in tow, followed him into his pride and joy, the _Sakura_.

She was a small craft, easily manned by a lone crew member, with a good-sized cargo hold, a single passenger cabin and another that served as both kitchen and living room. Things were going to be cosy.

"I don't normally carry more than one extra," Koki said.

He didn't have beds, just a whole bunch of futons that could be tethered to the floor in the event that the artificial gravity failed and you didn't fancy learning to fly in your sleep. He showed them where the sleeping gear was stashed; Nakamaru, no stranger to the ship, occupied himself with ensuring they had sufficient emergency oxygen and a reasonable quantity of travel conditioner in the tiny bathroom.

Jin didn't care about the lack of space. They'd lived with worse. "She's fast, right?"

"Like lightning." Koki beamed with pride. "Class 9 hyperdrive and the fastest sublight engines this side of Saturn. She'd be a racer if I didn't use her for trade."

Watching Koki treat his ship like a beloved pet proved most entertaining for Kame, who had always loved seeing his brash, tough-acting friend become a total marshmallow around puppies, small children, and anything else too cute to be associated with Koki's normal gangsta image. It almost took his mind off the fact that he was lying to both of them.

Almost...but not quite. Kame had never been good at lying - probably why his LIPS career had been doomed from the start - and he made a point of being as straightforward as possible, no matter the consequences. It didn't help that while Koki and Nakamaru were, circumstances excepting, more or less the same as the people he knew, they didn't treat him the same way and he couldn't slip into the comfortable, easy familiarity they shared, not without driving them away.

Fortunately, the tight space meant neither of them thought it strange that Kame and Jin were always in the same room and refused to separate - although they did receive some strange looks where the bathroom was concerned...

The cockpit had but two seats; there was a foldaway bench at the back which could be pulled down if no one was interested in being able to walk around and this went to Kame and Jin. Jin figured if it went badly when they surprised Koki with a course change, it was better to be behind him.

"How long have we got left?" Koki asked after a series of hyperspace jumps that left them all slightly dazed. "When does your niece go into surgery?"

Kame pretended to check the time on his datapad. "Another three days."

Koki grinned. "Plenty of time. Next jump brings us out by Alpha Cen A. You said she's in hospital there, right? Which settlement?"

"Actually," Kame decided to change the subject, "I'd like to stop off at the shops, if we've got that much time, and get her a present."

"For being a brave girl," Jin chimed in.

Nakamaru turned round and stared at them. "But you could see her before she goes into surgery. Isn't that more important?"

"You don't know my niece; she loves clothes. And accessories. And stuffed sheep dolls."

 _Just like her uncle_ , Jin thought. Kame was probably desperate to hit the shops on his own account, given that his extensive wardrobe was in another universe right now and laundry facilities on the _Sakura_ were fairly limited.

"She'd never forgive us if we turned up without designer goods." Jin pretended he'd just had an amazing idea. "Hey, you know Starshine, that shopping complex round Alpha Cen A? Didn't they just open an entire new wing of department stores? I'm sure we could find something there."

"And replace some of our luggage," Kame said. "We might be camped out at the hospital for a while."

Koki and Nakamaru exchanged dubious looks; Kame and Jin held their breath and hoped they wouldn't have to push the issue.

"Whatever you say," Koki said at last. "You're the customer."

 _I'm not the customer_ , Kame wanted to say. _I'm your friend!_ But he didn't, he couldn't. There was no way he could explain what had happened and expect them to believe him. He consoled himself by thinking about how this would all make a great story to tell everyone once they were all together again, about how he and Jin had managed to land themselves in a situation so strange none of them could possibly have seen it coming.

Docking at Starshine was a smooth, silent process, the autopilot easing the ship into the clamps. There, at least, nothing had changed.

"We'll be under an hour," Kame promised.

"Going round department stores?" Koki was understandably sceptical.

"He's an expert shopper," Jin said. "Can make it round a branch of Seibu in ten minutes flat."

This was indeed impressive. They agreed to meet back at the ship in an hour, during which time Nakamaru was going to venture out for his first glimpse of a foreign galaxy - the inside of a shopping mall. Koki was going along to play tour guide.

"Was that as weird for you as it was for me?" Kame led the way inside the bank. "I just want to get everything fixed so it'll stop being awkward."

"Every bit as weird. Let's go talk to that diamond of yours so we can go home."

Kame held his breath when he handed over his real ID, pressed his thumb to the scanner and typed in his access code - 1582 - to establish his identity, but had to start breathing again when the woman behind the desk took five minutes to locate him on the system. Jin scuffed his boots on the oval rug and hoped he didn't look like he was there to rob the place.

"Sorry for the delay, sir," the woman apologised. "I had to check through historical records."

"Historical?" Kame said. "Not current?"

"Our records show that you no longer keep a box in our vault, sir; you removed the contents two months ago." She lowered her voice. "Perhaps you've received one too many fastballs to the head?"

Kame looked around for an empty chair, failed to find one, and collapsed next to the desk.

\-----

One of the best parts of being in a couple, Jin found, was having someone to pick you up off the floor and walk you outside to talk you through a nasty shock, which was what he was currently doing for Kame. They sat on a bench, under the shelter of a pair of artificial trees, and fought off the onset of a major panic as best they could.

"How could he?" Kame wanted to know. "I mean, how could I? What was I thinking?"

"That you wanted to reunite your jewellery collection?"

"Very funny. What are we supposed to do now? Spend the rest of our lives running around the universe, living off your other self's bank account and hoping he doesn't notice?"

"You could always walk away," Jin said, only half-joking. "I'm the only thing that hasn't changed. If I'm away from you, who knows? Maybe you'll become this universe's Kamenashi Kazuya, and have an amazing career playing for the Lunar City Lunatics."

"Don't," Kame said sharply. "Wherever we go, we go together. Got it?"

It was tough for Jin to argue when Kame was staring straight at him from a distance of six inches. But he didn't want to know what would happen if they separated, either. "Got it. So where are we going?"

Kame giggled. "Crazy?"

"Crazy sounds nice. We wouldn't have to worry about anything then. We'd just be a pair of lunatics."

"Lunatics." Kame's eyes gleamed with sudden inspiration. "Lunar City Lunatics. Come on, Jin, we've got shopping to do before we return to the ship."

The next thirty minutes were spent putting Kame's shopping skills to the test, as both men outfitted themselves suitably for further flights, cramming toiletries, a change of clothes and some emergency rations (Jin insisted) in their newly-purchased bags. The shop staff gave them suspicious looks when they both squeezed into a single changing room but it couldn't be helped. To avoid further comparisons with himself, Kame bought a black fedora with silver skulls along the band - he didn't have time to change his hair colour, and he rather fancied he'd have his hands full back on the _Sakura_.

Jin liked the hat so much he bought one himself, _sans_ the skulls.

"Did you find something nice for your niece?" Nakamaru asked when they all met up at the docks.

"Lots of things." Kame patted the bag slung over his shoulders. "All giftwrapped. Did you enjoy yourself?"

"He spent the entire time stalking people he thought were well-dressed," Koki said.

"Just to see where they shop!"

Nakamaru protested his innocence until they were all back in the cockpit, strapping themselves in for departure. Kame knew he'd have to tell the truth soon - part of it, at the very least.

"So." Koki looked over his shoulder at the passengers in the back. "Where are we headed?"

Kame adjusted his jacket so he could draw his blaster quickly if he had to. Not that he'd fire it, but it was amazing how having a gun trained on something vital made people more likely to pay attention to you. "Lunar City Major."

That made Nakamaru turn around too. "What about the hospital?"

Koki was more annoyed than bewildered. "Are you out of your mind? After coming all the way here? If you just wanted to go shopping-"

"I didn't want to go shopping," Kame interrupted. "Well...all right, I did, but that's not important right now."

Jin wondered if Kame was going to tell them the whole truth, the one that guaranteed they'd be thrown in an institution somewhere if the story ever got out. Then he realised that the long silence was because Kame was leaving it up to him.

There was no way Koki would fly them anywhere if Jin told him everything. He settled on a compromise. "Kame's niece doesn't need surgery; I know he's got one but I've never met her, much less bought her designer gifts. We came here to open a safety deposit box." Kame opened his mouth to speak but Jin waved a hand to say "let me finish". "The box has already been emptied; we have reason to believe the contents are in Lunar City Major. With Kamenashi Kazuya."

Koki tried to turn the rest of the way around and almost strangled himself with his seatbelt. "I knew the resemblance was too much!"

"And I knew you were going to be trouble," Nakamaru said.

"What is he, your twin?" Koki asked Kame. "Clone?"

Kame thought fast. "Clone."

"Evil clone," Jin clarified.

Kame shot him a glare, because if this all sounded too melodramatic Koki was never going to buy it. He'd forgotten, however, Koki's love of all things over-the-top. The bigger the story, the better Koki liked it.

"Of course he's an evil clone!" Koki spared a glance for the console in front of him long enough to get the autopilot started on their departure, then turned back to Kame. "What did he take?"

"A diamond," Jin said, figuring he was more likely to remember what he'd said if he stuck to the truth where possible. "It was left to the real Kamenashi Kazuya," he patted Kame's arm, "by his grandparents."

Kame picked up the tale. "The Lunar City Lunatics made me an offer, and when I turned them down, they were so desperate to win they used stolen DNA to create a replica of me. I didn't know about it till I saw myself on the news, and by then, it was too late. Everyone thought he was the real thing."

"Wow." Nakamaru couldn't have looked more impressed if he'd just been given the secrets of the universe. "They made a clone just to win baseball games? Isn't that expensive?"

"They're not paying him much," Jin said. "He gets bed and board, and a small allowance, but he's not making the kind of money he thinks he should be; he owes it all to them. That's why he wants the diamond. He can sell it for a fortune and buy his freedom."

"He found out about me when I went to complain," Kame said. "Ever since then, he's been trying to take over my life. We've been on the run for the last couple of months; his handlers decided it would be a good idea to get rid of me so he didn't have any distractions. I only found out about my grandmother's will a few weeks ago."

"The diamond?" Koki asked.

Kame nodded. "I found out he'd been at the reading. I don't care about the rest of the inheritance, but I need to get that diamond back."

He wasn't sure where Kizuna had come from, in fact. Koki and Nakamaru had stolen it from Earth as part of a jewellery haul, but as far as they'd been concerned, it had been just another gem. Ueda had wanted it for a buyer - the enemies of Jin's former bosses, who had also been interested in the jewel, and planned to use the bane of Kame's LIPS career to get it. The only information on record about the diamond related to the unusual flaw in the centre.

The ship left the docking bay, then, throwing them all against their seat restraints and knocking Kame's hat to the cockpit floor. He bent down to retrieve it and found Nakamaru staring regretfully at him when he sat up again.

"I could've asked for your autograph after all."

"Wouldn't be worth much. I'm not the one with the shining baseball career." Kame was surprised by the envy he felt, all directed towards his "clone". That career could've been his, if he'd had the money back then - if he'd been selfish enough to put himself first instead of his family. He couldn't have done it, of course. There weren't too many things in his life he regretted, not counting that dreadful period when he'd been attempting to wipe out the human race under the influence of misplaced jealousy and dangerously high testosterone levels.

Putting his family first was nothing new to Kame. And what he was trying to do now, to restore the universe rather than giving it up to live out his dreams...well, that was for his family too - for the crew of the _KAT-TUN_ and especially for his co-captain, whose hand was even now reaching for Kame's for a quick, reassuring squeeze. Kame wasn't sure which of them it was meant to reassure - both, probably.

Koki interrupted what would otherwise have been a sweet moment. "The diamond - is it a family heirloom or something?"

"Very old, very precious," Kame said. "Been in the family for centuries."

"And it's cursed," Jin added for good measure. "Each owner hands it down to a specific person, and if anyone else takes possession, something horrible will happen to them."

This was all starting to spiral out of control, Kame and Jin playing off each other with increasingly bizarre additions the way they did on the odd occasions when the trainees begged for a bedtime story over the comm. Both men being in full possession of a competitive spirit, such tales were known to last for hours...or until some enterprising soul deactivated the comm.

Kame made his eyes as wide and haunted as possible, which wasn't much. "My clone won't last the year with that thing. Everyone else who's tried to claim it has died. Either he'll waste away from disease or he'll have a fatal accident during a game."

Jin helpfully wiggled his free hand and made ghost noises in the background. This didn't go down well with Nakamaru, who started shivering and hunching down in his seat.

"Does he know about the curse?" Koki said.

"No idea." Kame shrugged. "If he does, he didn't hear it from me. But if he dies, his handlers will get the diamond and more people will wind up dead. Not that I wish them well, but I really don't want their deaths on my conscience."

"All right." Koki started warming up the hyperdrive while the autopilot took them slowly out of the no-jump zone. He still looked annoyed. "Why the lie? Didn't think I'd agree to fly you out here without some sob story?"

 _Yes._ "No," Kame said, "but if we'd told you the truth, would you have believed it? Who goes searching for cursed jewels outside holovid heroes?"

"He's got a point," Nakamaru said. "It sounds kind of dangerous. Hey, didn't Earth President Kimura star in a holovid like that before he got elected?"

 _Earth President Kimura?_ Jin pressed his lips together in a firm line to keep from laughing. His nightmare, horrible though it had been, was coming true. He'd already stolen the ship (though the universe had stolen it back), his chief reason for buying the fedora had been to hide what was turning out to be a very bad hair day, and Kame had effectively deposed Tsubasa after all.

Kame couldn't get over it either. What had happened to Takki and Tsubasa? Were they still married? Did they even know each other? With no JE Fleet to head up, where was Admiral Takizawa Hideaki now? Working for LIPS, maybe?

"Let's start again." He removed the hat so it wouldn't fall off when he bowed. "I'm Kamenashi Kazuya."

"And I'm Akanishi Jin."

"And I'm starved," Koki said. "Anyone for lunch?"

\-----

The trip to Lunacy was filled with uncomfortable silences, awkward attempts at humour (mostly from Kame, who was used to being told his jokes didn't work) and hushed whispers. These last took place whenever Kame and Jin got a moment alone as they discussed what else might have changed about the universe. The idea of Kimura Takuya ruling the Earth had knocked them both for a loop, but it was by no means the first time an actor had taken up politics. Why, a thousand years ago, it had been all the rage in America.

"What happens if we can't get the diamond?" Kame murmured when they were lying together in the dimly-lit cabin, with Nakamaru busy brushing his teeth in the bathroom and Koki back in the cockpit, programming the autopilot to see them safely through the night.

"We'll get it. We have to." Jin didn't even want to contemplate what would happen if they didn't. Or worse yet, if they did and nothing happened. They were banking on Kizuna restoring the universe to its former state, which was a lot to ask of one diamond. And that assumed they hadn't both gone crazy in the meantime and the whole thing was a figment of their collective imagination. "Just think positive."

"I'd like to but you're making it very hard to think at all right now, Jin."

At some point in the five minutes they'd been ready for bed, Jin's futon had inched its way across the cabin floor and was attempting to merge with Kame's. Kame wasn't complaining. There were worse ways to go to sleep than snuggled up to Jin, Jin's back pressed against his chest, Jin's hair tickling his nose. Kame had an arm draped loosely over Jin's waist; Jin was pushing back, wriggling to get comfortable and causing problems for Kame that they weren't going to resolve given that the others would be coming to bed any minute now.

"How do you think Koki would feel about sleeping in the kitchen?" Jin giggled and stopped moving, much to Kame's relief. "And Nakamaru could sleep in the bathroom."

"I think he'd kick us both out into the cockpit and tell me that if I value my life, I won't do you in his chair." Kame's brain got stuck on the "chair" part. "Mmm, the cushion looked nice, and the arms were well-padded..."

"Stop." Jin knew exactly what Kame was picturing when he started humming dreamily over chairs. "He'll throw us both out the airlock if he catches you feeling up his chair - whether I'm involved in the process or not!"

Before Kame could protest that the chair wouldn't mind, really it wouldn't, the door slid open. Once again, Nakamaru was interrupting. Kame made a mental note to demote him when they got home.

"Are you guys making out in there?" Nakamaru staggered in with one hand over his eyes - wholly unnecessary, given the feeble glow of the nightlight attached to the wall.

Koki popped up behind him, finished with the autopilot, and growled, "They'd better not be. Some of us would like to get some sleep."

Kame waited till the others were settled and the lights were out before pressing a kiss to the back of Jin's neck. His attempt at keeping quiet was unsuccessful.

Nakamaru groaned. "This isn't the kind of holiday I was hoping for!"


	7. Chapter 7

Lunacy, as Lunar City Major was colloquially known, was familiar territory to the occupants of the _Sakura_. In another lifetime, they'd all lived there for months, waiting for the trial of Kame's former LIPS colleagues to end so he no longer had to stick around to give evidence. Then they'd won a ship in a rigged poker tournament and left as soon as they possibly could.

Once the autopilot had brought them gently down to the surface of Earth's moon, they all disembarked so Koki could lock up. He and Nakamaru were going to resupply with fuel and do some sightseeing, he'd said.

"What do I owe you?" Kame had paid their way to Alpha Centauri only - with Jin's card.

"Kick in for the hyperdrive fuel and we'll call it even." Koki lounged against the docking bay wall, trying for casual nonchalance. "Figured we might tag along for a bit."

"I thought you were going sightseeing?"

"We are," Koki said. "We've never seen a clone before, or a cursed diamond."

"I could probably write a paper on the clone for extra credit." Nakamaru patted his hair, which refused to stay flat. Lunacy's artificial atmosphere was heavy on the wind today.

Jin was on the verge of telling him not to waste his holiday on such academic enterprises, but he was certain - almost - that Nakamaru was joking.

Datapad in hand, Kame flipped through the local comconsole directory, connecting wirelessly through the spaceport's own systems. There were no contact details listed for 'Kamenashi Kazuya'. Oh well. It had been worth a shot. "He's ex-directory."

"Wouldn't you be if you were a star athlete?" Jin said. "People must be wanting to see him all the time. We'll just have to find him the old-fashioned way."

"Look for the nearest sports bar?" Koki suggested.

"Nope." Kame found the other hope he'd been clinging to, the latest sports news. "The Lunar City Lunatics are playing the Olympian Gods at the Crescent Moon Stadium tonight.

"We're going to the game."

Nakamaru grinned. "I take it back. This is exactly the kind of holiday I was hoping for!"

As Kame saw it, he and Jin were faced with three potential problems. They didn't have tickets for the game, which meant they were going to have to get creative to access the stadium. It wasn't likely the other Kame would have the diamond on him, so they were going to have to extract the information from him somehow and go in search of it.

And of course, they couldn't risk separation.

He checked his watch against the local time on his datapad. "It's only two here. We've got four hours before the game starts."

"Tickets will have sold out ages ago," Nakamaru said. "When the Lunatics started winning games, everyone wanted to go just for the novelty."

"And now they go for you." Koki pointed to Kame. "Or your clone, anyway. You're a total sports idol."

Jin waved a dismissive hand. "There's always guys selling tickets outside the stadium."

"And I'm not sure they're the kind of guys who take cards," Kame said. "Besides, I don't want to corner him on the field in front of 50,000 witnesses. We'll have to sneak in."

"Great!" Jin mustered all the enthusiasm he could. "Got any ideas?"

Kame pressed his thumb to the panel. The docking bay door creaked open, badly in need of oil, to reveal dozens of travellers milling about the corridor - including a group of four wearing familiar black and white uniforms. "Oh, one or two..."

\-----

Never in his worst nightmares had Jin envisioned himself wearing a LIPS uniform. As a kid he'd steered clear of them, knowing they'd arrest him if they ever found out he'd committed crimes for the old man that crossed interplanetary borders. As an adult, the only good thing he'd been able to say about them was that Kame looked hot in the uniform.

He still did, with his jacket sleeves rolled up to the elbows and shirt collar wide open. He'd touched up the black nail polish from Koki's stash. Despite the skull-print fedora he still wore, no one was going to mistake Kame for anything other than a LIPS officer.

"Nobody wears the uniform hat." Kame jerked his chin at the four unconscious male officers, stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and tied up in the cargo hold of the _Sakura_. One wore a trilby, one wore a purple beanie, one was completely bareheaded and the other was currently squashing his sombrero. "We can wear what we want."

Koki finished laminating their ID badges - stolen from the officers, with hastily-printed photographs stuck over the real ones. "Here you go, Officer Masuda."

 _Masuda?_ Kame tilted the beanie-wearer's chin towards the light. No doubt about it, they'd knocked out Lt. Masuda Takahisa, one of the JE Fleet officers assigned to Yamapi's pink flagship. This universe was getting stranger by the minute.

They'd had to resort to desperate measures to lure in the LIPS officers. Kame figured a combination of crime, scandal and celebrity should do it. He had Nakamaru quietly approach them, telling tales of how he'd seen Kamenashi Kazuya buying Trans-Saturnian Rum from a pair of infamous Jovian rappers - over a game of drunken strip poker, which nobody appeared to be any good at. Thrilled by the potential entertainment and blackmail value, the LIPS officers had followed Nakamaru without question. The moment they were through the door of the docking bay, Nakamaru hit the panel to close them in. Koki dropped all four with rapid bursts from his customised stunner - a guy had to be able to protect the person he loved, so he said - and minutes later, the occupants of the _Sakura_ were dressing in their borrowed uniforms.

"Are you sure we don't have time to launder them first?" Nakamaru asked, grimacing as he pulled on the jacket.

Kame's own inner neat freak was having a fit too, but they just didn't have the time. "Definitely. It'll take us near an hour to get to the stadium from here, and these guys won't stay stunned forever."

"Five hours," Koki said. "I can't guarantee they'll be out any longer than that. I'd like 'em out of my ship before they wake up, too."

Jin transferred his currently-useless comm badge into the right inner pocket of his LIPS jacket and tucked his blaster in the left. With any luck, the unconscious officers in Koki's cargo hold would soon be a thing of the past. Jin wasn't sure how the universe would change again, assuming it worked, but he hoped that they wouldn't need to come back. Consequently, he also wore his new hat, loathe to leave it behind when he returned home. Or home returned to him, whatever.

They tried to appear nonchalant as they left the docking bay, aiming for that casual LIPS swagger. It didn't come easily to Nakamaru. The station was on the other side of the spaceport but the trains were the fastest way to get around Lunacy. People took one look at the uniform and rushed to get out of the way.

Koki loved it. "It's like they're cowering in fear of us. I could get used to this uniform."

"Don't," Kame advised. "Sombrero-boy will be wanting it back."

It didn't escape his notice that Koki, with his slightly shady background, and Nakamaru, with his decent, upstanding life as a Red Spot Terminal security guard, had slipped only too easily into their normal roles - criminal acts were matter of course. Either that said more about their characters than Kame had time to think about, or by bringing the four of them together, he'd somehow taken steps to rebuild his own universe.

They hit the ticket machines at a dash, pausing only long enough for Jin to swipe his card and distribute the tickets. One-way, only. The platform was dead ahead, more crowded than one of Captain Kimura's holovid premieres, completely packed with enthusiastic baseball fans who'd flown all the way over for the game. Fans of the Olympian Gods, being from Mars, naturally wore red. Those who supported the Lunar City Lunatics wore a soothing light green, belying the team's name. Some, obviously Kamenashi Kazuya fans, had decorated their clothes with turtles. Kame pulled his fedora low over his eyes and kept moving.

It was a struggle to get through the sea of baseball fans but they managed, mostly thanks to Jin yelling in English (and occasionally Spanish) for people to get out of the way. The train was heaving, of course. Kame led the way down to the very last carriage, where he hoped fewer people would pass them by. It looked like they were going to be standing all the way to the Crescent Moon Stadium.

Or possibly not. When they reached the end carriage, a gang of obvious delinquents (hairbands, eyeliner, far too much lipstick, making only token attempts at wearing their school uniform) took one look at them and gave up their seats to the "LIPS officers". Jin clapped one on the shoulder as he skulked past and told him that this was indeed a mature and manly thing to do, but that his lipstick was a shade too dark. The youth glowered silently and made an obscene gesture on his way out, which Jin happily returned.

"You're not a kid anymore," Kame said. "You're supposed to be above being baited."

"You didn't know me when I was a kid." Jin stretched his legs as far as the cramped confines of the carriage would allow. "If I did that around the house they'd have broken my fingers for me. We all had to at least be able to act like good kids, otherwise we weren't much use for getting in places."

He hadn't meant to add the last bit; fortunately, the noise level was such that only Kame, right next to him, was able to hear it. He didn't want to give Koki and Nakamaru the wrong idea.

There was only one stop between the spaceport and the station closest to the stadium. The remaining occupants of the carriage took the opportunity to shuffle further down the train, or disembark altogether, rather than suffer the rest of the journey with four LIPS officers.

Only one man boarded. Everyone was stunned, for very different reasons.

"Taguchi Junnosuke!" Nakamaru exclaimed, forgetting he was supposed to be playing it cool.

Koki gave him an appraising look. "Must be our month for meeting sports heroes."

Junno favoured them all with a sunny smile and settled down at the other end of the carriage.

Kame couldn't believe his eyes either. What was Junno doing here? "Uh, excuse me?" he called. "Are you going to the game?"

"They invited me to pitch the opening ball," Junno said. "Isn't that great?"

Having been on the receiving end of Junno's pitches in many a virtual baseball game, Kame hoped the poor batter was adequately protected. Junno might be the approximate size and shape of a hatstand but beneath the long black coat he was hiding some serious muscles. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean his aim was any good...

"Brilliant," Kame said without enthusiasm.

Junno failed to notice that no one was exactly thrilled by his admission. "Isn't it? I couldn't believe it when my agent told me. She said it would be good publicity for the tournament I'm in next week."

"We should've placed a bet," Jin muttered.

"And they've got me pitching against...um..." Junno edged closer to their end of the carriage; Kame held his breath. "Against you."

Clearly, Junno was bewildered. It would've been only too easy for Kame to deny having anything to do with himself. Jin might be puzzled but the other two would think it a perfectly sensible course of action.

"Think it's a sign?" Jin whispered.

Kame nodded and beckoned Junno over. "Publicity stunt," he said. "I'll explain later. We should go in together."

"Do I need a LIPS uniform too, 'Officer Masuda'?"

Unless they were lucky - or unlucky - enough to run into more officers on the way, Junno wasn't getting his own uniform. "No," Kame said firmly, thinking fast. "You have to pretend we've arrested you. It all comes to a head on the field, when we drag you out to the pitcher's mound and make like we're going to execute you. The crowd will love it."

It was a ridiculous explanation but Junno bought it, though only after Kame promised to let him juggle a few baseballs before pitching one.

Koki rolled his eyes. "Why don't we just get up there and do a comedy routine while we're at it?"

Nakamaru liked the idea but he was the only one. Kame had no intention of letting any of them get anywhere near the field, because if they did, it was already too late. He had to find his other self before the game began...and now he had to do it with four people in tow. Stealth was no longer a viable option.

When they left the train, the charade began, with Kame and Jin walking in front, Nakamaru and Koki behind, and Junno in the middle. They didn't have handcuffs to make it more realistic, but there were so many people rushing through the station that no one noticed. Everyone was on their way to the game. Those who weren't headed straight for the stadium were lining up for the bathrooms.

Jin wasn't sure how Kame planned on getting into the stadium with Junno - why would they arrest someone and take him to a baseball game? - but he agreed that they couldn't simply have left him to his own devices. Of course that did mean they were going to have a lot of explaining to do if this didn't work...

Getting near the stadium was a task and a half in itself. Although staff members appeared to be everywhere, the actual rate at which the crowd moved through the gates was painfully slow. Kame stood on tiptoe to peer over the mass of people; eventually, Junno took pity on him and put his height to good use, though from that distance he couldn't see much.

"I think they're frisking everyone when they collect the tickets," Junno said at last. "Or the staff are feeling up the fans, I'm not sure."

Kame thought it was probably the former. "Are you armed?"

"Me?" Junno looked absolutely bewildered that anyone would accuse him of such a thing. "No. Do you think I should be?"

The rest of them had an excuse for being armed. They'd taken the stunners from the LIPS officers, meaning they now carried two weapons apiece - Nakamaru had brought his stunner from work, just in case, and Koki never went anywhere without his customised one. Fortunately, the uniforms gave them the authority to be carrying. Without one, Junno was better left unarmed.

"No, I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't be stopped by security, that's all. They might not know you were invited to throw the opening ball." Kame hoped it wasn't going to be necessary to pull a gun on his other self, but if anyone did, it certainly wasn't going to be Junno, who knew less about the situation than anyone else present.

When they finally got close enough to a gate to talk to a member of staff - young, pretty and very familiar - they found out the reason for the delays.

"Got to search everyone coming in," he explained as he glanced at their ID badges. "Even celebrities. Never know what they might be carrying. You know that enka singer, Shibutani Subaru? We stopped him earlier; had a skull-shaped mace in his bag. Claimed it was a fashion accessory, but we soon sorted him out."

Jin would have found this less disconcerting if he hadn't known that Subaru was actually the captain of the JE Fleet ship _K8_ \- and the staff member offering the explanation was the _K8_ 's Chief Engineer, Ohkura Tadayoshi. He thought the skull-shaped mace sounded pretty cool, though.

Ohkura checked that their faces and badges matched - Kame's puzzled him, but he shrugged and moved on - and patted Junno down, finding nothing. He had to ask for confirmation that Junno had indeed been invited, as the name didn't ring any bells.

"What's with the security?" Koki asked. "Has there been some kind of scare?"

"You could say that." Ohkura gestured to them to wait a moment. He muttered to his colleagues that he was taking a teabreak, grabbed an Eito Ranger lunchbox from inside the booth, and beckoned Koki and co. to follow him. They landed up in the break room, where Jin immediately launched himself at the vending machine.

Apparently, Ohkura was taking a genuine teabreak. The lunchbox wasn't just for show. In between mouthfuls, he filled them in. "We're not supposed to know anything about it, just make sure no one comes in with weapons, but I've heard that someone's looking to take out the Lunatics' star player."

Everyone looked at Kame. He held out his name badge. "Officer Masuda, remember?" That was all he needed, to have someone take out his other self before he managed to get to him.

"Right." Ohkura took another bite of his mini-pizza. "Nobody told me about this publicity stunt of yours...nobody tells me anything, really..."

That wasn't Kame's problem, so long as Ohkura bought the story. "Do you know who it is?"

"Some crime family from Earth, I think. Maybe...Kitayama?"

"Kitagawa?" Kame suggested.

"That's the one!"

Jin sprayed lemon water all over the floor. Nakamaru, disgusted, passed him a tissue.

"The old man owns the Olympian Gods." Jin was far too agitated to think about cleaning. "I forgot he was so into baseball. He couldn't buy his way into any of the teams on Earth so he went for Mars instead."

"That's very helpful," Koki said, "but how do _you_ know that?"

"Um..." Jin smiled weakly. Innocence, he could do. False innocence was more of a challenge. "I'm a big fan of true crime stories?" Nobody was swallowing that one, with the possible exception of Ohkura, who was more interested in swallowing the contents of his lunchbox. Telling the truth wasn't ideal, but Jin wasn't sure he could keep up with any more lies. Keeping track of Kame's identity was tough enough already. "I used to work for the Kitagawas, okay? When I was a kid. I left years ago."

Nakamaru sighed. "Anything else we should know about you and Kame? Murder convictions, unpaid fines, anything like that?"

"Unpaid fines?" Koki gave him a "what the hell?" look.

"That's it," Kame said. "I think." He was intrigued by the way aspects of Jin's past had remained unchanged. Perhaps it was because Jin himself was unchanged. His leaving the Kitagawas had had nothing to do with Kame - if the bank account was any indication, he was with them still. That guy back at Red Spot Terminal had certainly thought so.

Which meant that if the alter!Jin was still working for old man Kitagawa, and doing what Kame's Jin suspected him of doing for a living...oh.

From the way the blood had drained from Jin's face, it was clear he'd considered the same possibility. "You wouldn't," Kame said fiercely. "Ever."

"I might." Jin ignored the confusion they were causing. "If I hadn't left, I might be like that."

Kame wrapped his arms around Jin from behind, refusing to let go until Jin relaxed, releasing the tension from his body with a couple of slow, deep breaths. "You wouldn't."

"I don't really get what's going on," Koki said, trying not to look at them but unable to help himself, "but if some hired gun from the Kitagawas takes out your clone, does that mean it's the curse working or he's just really unlucky?"

"Clone? Curse?" Poor Junno was completely in the dark. "Nobody said anything about a curse. Can I call my agent?"

This was getting out of hand. Kame released his partner and made everyone else take a seat so he could have a height advantage. "Short version. I'm the _real_ Kamenashi Kazuya. The guy who's playing in the game tonight is my clone. He's stolen a diamond that belongs to me and I have to get it back. There's a curse on the jewel that will strike down any owner but the true one. If he gets assassinated, I lose my chance to find out where it is.

"Basically, if you see someone who looks like me but isn't wearing a LIPS uniform, stop him."

Junno beamed. "This is some publicity stunt! Who's your agent? Can I hire you guys to run my PR?"

"Depends," Koki said. "What are your finances like?"

"Never mind what his finances are like!" Jin wanted them to stop sitting around and talking so they could get on with finding the alter!Kame. The sooner they found this diamond, the sooner things would return to normal. He wanted to be back on his own ship, with the friends who'd known him for years, having stupid arguments about who spilled coffee all over whose favourite scarf and why 'Prison Planet Break' was a far better series than 'CSI: Pluto'. "Can we start looking?"

"I'm not sure you should be-" Ohkura paused and frowned as his datband crackled to life. He shook it a couple of times and held it up to his ear, listening hard for about thirty seconds. "They've caught someone armed! I'm supposed to get back outside. I'll be back in a few minutes and we can straighten this whole thing out. Just don't move."

Not moving was the last thing any of them wanted to do - especially if, as Jin feared, it was his other self. He raced after Ohkura, Kame hot on his heels, the other three bringing up the rear. The chase led them back out to the gate, where a violent struggle was taking place between a pair of stadium staff members and the missing member of the _KAT-TUN_ 's command crew.

"Ueda Tatsuya!" Koki gasped.

Nakamaru cursed himself for not having his autograph book handy. "I keep running into famous sportsmen and no one's going to believe me when I get home. Baseball players, billiards players, boxers..."

It didn't surprise Kame that Ueda was known for his boxing here. He was the number one in his weight class in the entire JE Fleet, and nobody was more dedicated to training his body. It looked like he was about to be forcibly ejected from the stadium, if the staff had their way.

"Hold it!" Jin decided to take advantage of the uniform. The stadium staff were just there to take the tickets; if they ran into trouble, they called for security. But if four LIPS officers took trouble off their hands, there'd be no need. "What's he being accused of?"

One of the staff got a trifle carried away and barked out, "Carrying two lethal weapons, sir!"

Jin smirked. 'Sir' sounded nice. He didn't get to hear it very often. Some of his crew had tried it for a while but it hadn't lasted. "What kind of weapons? Guns? Knives? Maces?"

"His fists, sir!"

"Huh?"

Ueda freed himself easily, leaving the hapless staff members sitting stunned on the ground. "They asked if I was carrying any weapons, and I said that my hands were registered lethal weapons. It was a joke."

"We'll take responsibility," Jin said, holding out his badge for emphasis. "If Taguchi fails we might need a relief celebrity pitcher for the opening ball."

"Nobody's expecting that much," Junno said. "How can I fail?"

Koki smacked him lightly across the back of the head and herded him back indoors. Kame and Jin double-teamed Ueda, marching him off to the break room before he could ask any awkward questions.

The awkward questions, as it turned out, came from Koki, as Ueda seemed quite content to watch and see how the whole thing played out. "What's your obsession with collecting sportsmen? I can understand roping in Taguchi to give us credence, but why do we need Ueda as well?"

Jin was relieved that they'd run out of command crew members to find, but short of saying that Kame's clone was a bit of a fanboy and the more celebrities they could draw him in with, the better, he had no idea how to respond. He looked to Kame for help, receiving only a shrug in return. In the end, he had to settle for stonewalling them. "I can't explain it, okay? You just have to trust us."

"Please," Kame added, and that seemed to clinch it for Koki.

"Fine, but if anything goes wrong..."

"Goes wrong with what?" Ueda asked. "I came here to watch the game. Do we have time to get a couple of hot dogs?"

Kame checked. One hour left before the game was due to start. His other self would definitely be at the stadium by now, if only they could find him. "No time for hot dogs; we've got to look for someone first."

"Well, you did manage to get me inside," Ueda said amiably. "As long as I get to my seat before the game starts, I can help you find them. Who are we looking for?"

Kame removed his hat so there could be no doubt whatsoever about his identity.

"Me."


	8. Chapter 8

It took another two minutes for Kame to give Ueda the same short explanation he'd given Junno; he hoped Ohkura was too busy after his teabreak to remember any of it and come looking for them. To his credit, Ueda didn't argue about such outlandish things as cursed diamonds and custom-made clones. He'd always been at least partly in a world of his own, which helped tremendously in allowing him to believe the implausible.

They arranged to split up to cover more ground. Kame and Jin had to go together, of course, and Nakamaru accompanied them. He and Koki could easily communicate by datband, so Koki led the other group. Everybody knew what Kamenashi Kazuya looked like. Recognising him, when they found him, wouldn't be a problem.

"Remember: if you find him, just keep him under control until I get there," Kame said. "Don't stun him if you can avoid it. And especially don't hit him in the head; I need to talk to him."

Koki had handed his stolen stunner to Ueda, and Nakamaru had given his to Junno, both against their better judgment. Once Junno was armed, he appeared to lose faith in the idea of the whole thing being some mad publicity stunt. It didn't make him any less cheerful, though.

The Crescent Moon Stadium was enormous. Inside the building, several storeys ringed the arena, each one with dozens of rooms to be searched and thousands of people still wandering around before taking their seats. They queued for the bathrooms, they queued for food and souvenirs, they queued simply because they were standing next to people who happened to be standing next to other people and somehow, a queue had formed.

"Don't they have anything better to do?" Jin complained after being mobbed by a gang of teenage girls.

Kame jammed his hat even further down on his head. "Apparently not. It's a shame we won't get to see the game after all this."

"I'm not holding off fixing the universe so you can watch baseball!"

Jin had spoken more emphatically than he'd intended; unfortunately, Nakamaru had overheard. "Fixing the universe?" he repeated. "Does this have anything to do with clones?"

"He meant that we'd be putting things right by doing this," Kame said. "Jin's very into his causes."

"Oh yeah." Jin pumped his fist in the air in mock-salute. "Save the trees, help the whales, switch off the lights and all that."

Nakamaru was overjoyed by this and insisted on sharing his own views on the environment as they searched, though in truth, the only bit Jin really cared about was switching off the lights, and only then when Kame was with him.

Once they fought their way clear of the public areas it became easier to move, the crowd being reduced to staff only. They followed the signs to the locker rooms, which were, as Kame pointed out, the most logical places to search before a game. Koki's team had checked in to say they were approaching from the other side. Whichever team located the room in use by the Olympian Gods was to join the others, as it was unlikely that alter!Kame (or clone!Kame, depending on who you were and what you knew) would be chatting up his opponents.

"Remember," Kame said, "it's all about the attitude. You're LIPS officers in uniform and you don't answer to anyone except your boss. And since you don't technically have one and I'm the only one of us who has actually served-"

Jin put a hand up to stall him. "We get it." When Kame started on a power trip, it was best to stop him before he went too far. "After you, leader."

They were descending a staircase when Koki's voice crackled over Nakamaru's datband. "Guys? You're not going to believe this but...uh..."

In the background, Ueda said, "Just tell them."

"Uh...are there any more clones running around? Because we think we just saw another Akanishi Jin."

Kame groaned and grabbed Nakamaru's wrist so he could join the conversation. "Where? What was he wearing?"

"Going into the men's room by the sushi stand, third floor. I only got a quick look, might not have been him. He had his hair tied back in a ponytail, wore jeans, white T-shirt and a black vest. Do you want us to go back and see if he's still there?"

Kame was trapped between a rock and a hard place. If he asked them to keep an eye on alter!Jin, that meant he acknowledged the possibility of Jin becoming a paid killer. If he didn't, he took the risk of having alter!Kame wiped out before he could ask about the diamond. He looked to Jin for help, but Jin was frozen in place, back pressed against the wall and eyes glazed over.

"Kame?" Koki said. "Still there?"

"Still here." He made an executive decision. They couldn't take the risk. "If you find him, follow him. And be careful."

He dropped Nakamaru's wrist, then waved a hand in front of Jin's face. "Hey. You still with us?"

Jin was, but just barely. "I knew it. The old man sent him to take you out."

"He could be here to watch the game." Kame knew he didn't sound convincing but he still had to try. "Maybe he's a fan. Maybe our other selves are secretly seeing each other and he's here to cheer his boyfriend on, who knows?"

"And maybe he's here to kill him and we'll both be stuck here forever."

"Shut up before I have to kick you down the stairs."

"But-mph!"

"Now get moving," Kame said after detaching his lips from Jin's. "I think the locker rooms are on the next floor down."

"Can you guys not do that?" Nakamaru asked. "There's a pair of security guards giving us some really weird looks. I think they want to join in."

"Not allowed." Kame ushered the other two down the stairs. "Locker rooms: dead ahead."

"Hold it." The note on the door said they'd found the right room - the Lunar City Lunatics were inside - but the guard on the door showed no signs of removing himself from their path. "I'm going to have to ask you for some ID."

All three men held out their badges for inspection. The guard lingered longest over Kame's. "I don't know how you got out or why you're dressed like that, Mr. Kamenashi, but you'd better get back inside. You know the rules - everyone stays together till you come out for the game. Weren't you paying attention when Coach told you someone's gunning for you tonight?" He opened the door behind him.

It was as good an opportunity as they were ever going to get. The guard might not believe the disguise but maybe the players would. Kame could corner his other self.

"Sorry." He winked at the guard and threw an arm round Jin's shoulders. "Slipped out for a little privacy, if you know what I mean."

The guard winked back, though with less style. "I get you, Mr. Kamenashi." He looked hard at Nakamaru. "What's his story?"

Nakamaru jabbed Jin in the arm. "I'm his minder. Where he goes, I go."

"And he's going with me." Kame rushed through the door before the guard poked holes in their story. Jin and Nakamaru followed, Jin somewhat irritated.

"My _minder_?"

"It sounded better than 'babysitter'," Nakamaru said.

Nobody noticed them at first. The room was full of men wearing pale green uniforms, talking excitedly amongst themselves about the impending game. Kame recognised some of them as belong to the Lunatics he knew in his own universe. There was little Anderson, shortest man on the team and best known for being struck out more times than anyone else in the league. He was deep in conversation with Scacci, who never caught a ball clean when dropping it would do just as well. Wyatt, leaning against the back wall, was notorious for tripping en route to first base. If he made it past there, he was okay, but that first stage was critical.

But there was only so long three men in black, two of them wearing fedoras, could avoid attention. They scanned the room in search of the other Kame. He was nowhere to be seen.

Kame was just about to suggest they check the stalls in the corner when one of the players - unfortunately, one he didn't recognise - hailed him from across the room.

"Kame! Thought you'd be longer than that. You say you're going out for a quickie you're not kidding, are you?"

Another player joined in. "I thought you were just slipping out to meet _one_ guy? Where'd you pick up the other one?"

Nakamaru looked like he'd rather be trapped in a pit of piranhas than spend another minute in that locker room.

"I didn't know you were into cosplay," Anderson chimed in. "You should've said; I've got a schoolgirl costume that'd fit you perfectly!"

So much for the LIPS uniforms. Kame gathered from the greetings that his other self was more concerned about getting laid than getting assassinated, which meant that he could be _anywhere_ and they were right back where they started - clueless.

"Guys," he began, interrupting the catcalls, wolfwhistles, and other animal-related sounds of congratulations, "I know this'll sound stupid, but did I say where I was going?" The room exploded with laughter, leaving Kame with a sheepish smile. "I know, I know. But I left my sunglasses, and now I can't remember where. I had other things to think about."

He hoped they managed to restore the universe, otherwise he was going to be forever known as the team's airhead. The speculative leers he, Jin and Nakamaru were receiving from the others left him with no doubt that they were gleefully contemplating exactly how he'd managed to lose his sunglasses.

"Somewhere on the third floor, wasn't it?" Wyatt said. "I'm sure you said something about going for sushi. I thought it was a euphemism, personally..."

 _Third floor. Sushi stand._ "Contact Koki," Kame whispered to Nakamaru. "Tell him to stay up there; I might be around. We're on our way."

Nakamaru nodded and did so, using Jin for cover while Kame took a peek out the door. The security guard smiled back at him and waggled a disapproving finger. Kame shut the door in a hurry.

"Door's out, unless anyone feels like stunning the guard."

One of the other players, who was throwing a ball in the air and catching it in his glove, made the suggestion that Kame merely send one of his "companions" to locate his sunglasses for him, saving him from having to do it himself. This was entirely too sensible, so Kame ignored it.

"Go the same way you went before," Anderson said. "The window hasn't moved."

Kame took one look at the window and concluded that his other self was clearly insane. "Tiny" didn't quite do it justice; wherever alter!Kame was, he was probably missing a layer of skin. He couldn't see Jin wriggling through - his ego alone would have problems - and since they couldn't risk separation, the window was out.

Jin felt the same way. "How about bribery? Or we could send Nakamaru out to lecture him about saving energy. That should put him to sleep."

Nakamaru ignored him. "What about asking Koki to create a diversion? Or," he smiled brightly, "we send Akanishi out to distract him. A couple of hair flips and a few coy glances should do it."

"What exactly do you think I am?"

"Hmm." Kame wasn't touching that one. "I think he's got something, though..."

The team didn't take much convincing to get with the plan. In fact, a couple of them fell in so readily that Kame suspected they'd been after an opportunity to take a shot at him for a while. He borrowed a ball, wound up, and gave the nearest locker a dent to remember. That was the cue for the shouting to break out.

"I've had enough of you, Kamenashi!" Wyatt yelled. "You waltz in here with your emptyheaded prettyboys and your fancy designer cosplay outfits and you think we should all put up with it when you start going at it in the showers!" _Sotto voce_ , he added, "How am I doing?"

Kame gave him a thumbs up.

Jin kicked a locker on the opposite side. "Emptyheaded prettyboys? You're just jealous because no one with any taste would even look twice at you!"

Eager to help, Scacci overturned a bench. The crash drew the attention of the guard. "Keep it down in there, can't you? I thought it was rock stars who were supposed to destroy rooms, not athletes!"

Everyone ignored him to concentrate on making as much of a ruckus as possible. Bags flew through the air, with tempers following. Kame received abuse about his perfectionist streak, his bad jokes, his love of designer goods, his habit of painting his nails and his apparently insatiable libido, though much of this was drowned out by the clang of metal and Kame's own, entirely artificial fury. Jin helped out with some inarticulate yells; Nakamaru judged it safest to keep out of harm's way.

When Kame gave the signal, Wyatt flung open the door and shoved him outside, yelling, "And stay out!" for good measure. Kame caught himself before he hit the wall. Jin and Nakamaru slipped out after him, the door slamming shut behind.

The guard was not at all happy about this. "With all due respect, Mr. Kamenashi, you're supposed to get back in there. It could be dangerous out here."

"It's definitely dangerous in there! I'll be back for the game." Kame whirled round to head for the stairs. "Come on, guys."

Leaving the guard muttering obscenities about divas, they raced back upstairs to the third floor. The sushi stand wasn't hard to find. Junno was standing next to it, entertaining the queue with a series of bad food-related puns. He broke off when he saw Kame.

"Koki and Ueda are watching them," he explained. "They took a tray and went to sit down at the tables in the back."

"Watching who?" Kame said. "Did my clone show up?"

Junno led them into the alcove so they could see for themselves. There were half a dozen small tables, each one occupied by diners bolting their food before the game. Koki and Ueda were leaning casually against opposite walls, unable to sit down as all the chairs were full.

Right at the back, almost completely hidden by the tables in front, sat Kamenashi Kazuya and Akanishi Jin.

"It makes sense that your clone would have the same taste in men as you do," Nakamaru said, fascinated by the sight. "But why did they clone Akanishi too?"

Kame was too taken aback by the sight of himself to come up with an answer. It was one thing seeing pictures on the news, or hearing people talk about him, but to actually see his other self in the flesh was nothing short of horrifying.

Jin didn't feel quite the same way. "I can see why the other you sneaked out to see the other me. I mean, look at me!" He watched alter!Jin's face light up with laughter. "Oh yeah, I'd definitely do me."

"I think you'd have some competition." It was quite clear to Kame that their other selves were taking great pleasure in hiding out in plain sight, chatting away like they'd known each other for years - which well they might have. "Don't go getting any ideas about a foursome. You wouldn't have the stamina."

Nakamaru covered his ears. "Do the rest of us really need to know this?"

"He's cutting it close if he's going to play." Junno checked his watch. "You might have to substitute, Kame."

"That's not funny." While Kame did find it somewhat surreal to witness what was effectively himself and Jin on a date, it gave him hope that alter!Jin wasn't there to wipe out alter!Kame. It didn't look like the last meal of a condemned man by any means. "We need to get him alone."

By this point, Koki had sidled up to them. "Those of us who aren't already sitting at that table and are still in uniform," meaning himself and Nakamaru, "could go over there and haul him off for questioning. You said it's all about the attitude, right?"

"Right." Kame caught Koki's eye. "Let's get him somewhere a little less crowded."

They couldn't get him out of the stadium altogether but the staff-only areas would do. Koki suggested the break room they'd visited earlier; the location wasn't important. Kame just didn't want anyone spotting him confronting his other self, especially not the media.

The decision was made for them as alter!Kame left the table, heading for the stairs. Kame was slightly mortified to see how his other self insisted on waving cutely at alter!Jin as he departed, though Jin found it adorable.

"Watch the other Jin," Kame muttered to Koki as he and Jin set off in pursuit. "We'll be back in a minute."

They were running out of time. Alter!Kame was presumably rejoining his team, which meant Kame's chances of getting him alone were shrinking by the second and if he didn't manage it there was going to be a locker room full of very confused (and possibly angry) people.

The stairwell was practically empty, with only the other Kame jogging round and down below them, bouncing flecks of green and red. Kame and Jin picked up the pace; their quarry appeared not to notice he'd acquired a tail, for he never looked up. It wasn't until they exited the stairwell and entered the corridor that they finally saw another person.

It was another security guard - not the same one as before, because this one was taller, younger and wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. The badge hanging halfway down his chest provided the only spot of colour on an otherwise solid black outfit.

Further down the corridor, the lone guard outside the locker room had disappeared. The new guard was positioned by another door entirely, near the entrance to the stairwell, close enough that he didn't have to leave his post to talk to alter!Kame.

Jin couldn't hear what was said, not from where they were lingering in the doorway, but alter!Kame's expression went from confused to accepting in the space of ten seconds and when the guard opened the door next to him, he had no problems walking through it. Jin wished he could see the guard's face. There was something familiar in the way he stood, in the way his fingertips caressed the pink teddy bear hanging from the stunner on his belt...

"Jin!"

Kame's frantic whisper shook Jin out of his memories. "What?"

"There was a sign on that door when we were down here before," Kame said. "It's gone now. It leads to one of the emergency evacuation tunnels. You know, the ones they make everyone go down if the domes fail and we start losing the atmosphere?"

Jin knew. On Earth, such things weren't necessary, but humans couldn't survive on the surface of the Moon without the domes that shielded them, locking in the artificial atmosphere and allowing them to live their lives as they would anywhere else. The alternative was an eternity in what would be little more than grounded spaceships.

Kame nudged him towards the door, eager to follow. "Why would the guard take him down there?"

"That's not a real security guard." Jin's heart broke the moment he remembered where he'd seen the teddy bear before. He'd bought it twelve years ago, as a present for his best friend - the only pink one in the store, and he'd been a bit embarrassed when the assistant asked him if he was buying it for his girlfriend and aww, wasn't that cute, he was blushing. The recipient hadn't minded the colour at all, though. It had always been his favourite.

"That's not a real security guard," Jin repeated. "That's Yamapi, and I can think of exactly two reasons why he'd invite your other self down to the tunnels. Either the other me is being cheated on, or..." He didn't want to say it.

Kame sighed and drew his blaster. "This wasn't how I wanted to confirm your innocence. We'd better go after them."

Jin really didn't want to shoot anybody, especially people who happened to be identical to his loved ones. He drew his stolen stunner instead. What it lacked in intimidation, it made up for in humanity. Perhaps if he just shot everyone in the ankles, on the lowest setting, they could stop this ridiculous chase all round the stadium and get some answers.

Unlike most of the doors in the stadium, this one was a slider. Jin pressed his thumb to the panel. It was a heavy door, unwilling to open at any great speed, but eventually there was enough room for Jin to squeeze himself through the gap. He stepped back to give Kame space to follow...

...and the door slid shut, leaving Kame on the other side.


	9. Chapter 9

It was usually Jin who had trouble opening doors. There wasn't a door on the _KAT-TUN_ he hadn't broken at one time or another, though to be fair, some of them hadn't been his fault - the ship was as contrary and spirited as her crew. But this time Kame was the one having problems.

No matter how hard he pressed his thumb to the panel, the door wouldn't budge. He tried his other fingers, just in case. No luck there, either. Kicking it didn't help matters. It wasn't a smart move, because the damned thing was pretty solid and Kame's boots weren't exactly space-armour calibre, but then, Kame wasn't feeling real smart right now. His vision was beginning to blur, edges softening to gentle arcs that looped back on themselves. He closed his eyes and pounded on the door until someone grabbed him by the waist, spinning him around.

It was Koki. "Kame, get a grip! What happened? Where is everyone?"

"Through that door," Kame panted. He wasn't sure he was even pointing in the right direction. The world wasn't where he thought it was. "Jin went through and it shut after him!"

"We'll get it open." Koki propped him against the wall and examined the panel. "Calm down, you look like you're about to pass out. We'll get Jin and your clone out of there, then we'll find out where the diamond is, and then we're all going for a very stiff drink or six."

Kame didn't like the quasi-hysterical laugh that slipped out. "They're not alone in there."

The slowly descending blurs resolved themselves into Nakamaru and the others as they drew nearer to Kame. It was odd, he thought, that from a distance, Ueda reminded him very much of the captain of his baseball team at university - short but powerful, with one hell of a swing. He'd gone on to play for the Red Sox, as Kame recalled.

 _No._ Kame rubbed his eyes furiously. He'd never been to university. He'd had to give up baseball after high school, sacrificing his dream in favour of more practical things, such as survival. But this other Kame...had he gone to university? Was it _his_ memory?

"Hmm." Koki kicked the door once himself. "I think the locking mechanism must've activated when it shut." He turned to Kame, tilting his hat up for a better look. "What do you mean, they're not alone in there?"

Kame slid down the wall, leaving his hat in Koki's hand. "My clone was lured in by a false security guard; Jin followed. You know a guy named Yamashita Tomohisa?"

"No," chorused Koki, Nakamaru, Ueda and Junno.

"Yes," said the other Jin.

Kame stared up at his partner's other self, who was looking down at him with equal curiosity. There really wasn't much of a difference. Alter!Jin wore different clothes and accessories but was otherwise identical. Kame had been expecting some sort of sign, like a scar or another ear piercing, but there was nothing that marked this Jin as being other than the man Kame knew and loved.

"He was about to leave, so we thought we'd bring him with," Ueda explained. "Clone? Twin? Doppelganger?"

"Uh..." Kame couldn't think straight. The part of him that was obsessed with punctuality was telling him he should be with his team by now, because it wasn't long before the start of the game and if he wasn't at least fifteen minutes early he was late. He wondered what his other self was feeling...if he still existed. He hadn't forgotten Jin's suggestion that once the final tie with his own universe was broken, once he and Jin were separated, that he'd become this universe's Kamenashi Kazuya. There was nothing holding the change back now.

"You look just like him!" Alter!Jin sounded the same as Kame's Jin, of course, with such wonder in his voice that Kame could've hugged him. "Except kind of sick. Are you okay?"

"Long story." Kame forced himself to stand. "I don't have time to explain things. What do you know about Yamashita Tomohisa?"

"He was born in 2985, loves pink, has a younger sister-"

"Not that kind of knowledge." Kame took a steadying breath. "Does he work for the Kitagawas?"

Alter!Jin's look of awe disappeared, leaving him blank and distant. Too late, Kame remembered he was still wearing the LIPS uniform. That kind of question, coming from a law enforcement officer, was bound to cause problems.

The seal on his badge was by no means perfect - they hadn't had the time - so it gave easily when he peeled it away with his nail, revealing the original face underneath. He showed it to alter!Jin, who nodded.

"So you're impersonating a LIPS officer _and_ a professional baseball player. So what? That doesn't tell me what you want with Yamashita."

"I don't," Kame said softly, and meant it. While the two of them had become friends over the years, their relationship with Jin - in particular, Yamapi's shared history with Jin - had always coloured it, making it less comfortable than it would otherwise have been. Kame had never forgotten that Yamapi had been there first, had known Jin as a child and then as a young man, had spent those awkward teenage years with him when Kame had been in the same city, not so very far away but completely unknown.

At least Kame remembered that, even if he was acquiring fragments of foreign memories from his other self. "He's taken the Kame you know through that door. Do you have any idea why he might've done that?"

"I haven't seen him in three years," alter!Jin said. "He's still based in Tokyo, on Earth. The old man's got me travelling all over the galaxy for him; our schedules never seem to match up. I didn't think they'd ever met."

"I wish they hadn't. Do you know anything about the Kitagawas ordering a hit on me? I mean...uh, on Kamenashi Kazuya?"

"If I did, do you think I'd have let him out of my sight?"

Koki held up a hand to interrupt them. "I still don't know who you are or who the guy through that door is, but it's definitely locked so if we want to get in, we're going to need someone authorised to unlock it. Anyone seen a staff member around?"

"I could open it." Alter!Jin pulled a flat green card from his wallet. Kame recognised it immediately. "If you give me a reason."

"I think..." Kame had to blink away memories of the first time he stepped up to bat in a professional game, making himself think about his memories with Jin instead, of the first time he'd seen Jin's face over the viewscreen in the _Murasaki_. "I think your best friend is being paid to kill your boyfriend."

Alter!Jin shook his head. "Not possible."

"Does anyone know you're seeing him?"

"I haven't told anyone; don't know if he has. I don't really want the old man knowing everything about my life, you know?"

Kame had never met Johnny Kitagawa. Jin didn't speak about him much; he seemed to love and fear the old man in equal measure, giving Kame the impression that one of the Sol System's most revered crimelords was rather like an eccentric grandfather: stern, but kindly to those he favoured.

"Then," Kame said reasonably, "he wouldn't have a problem ordering the removal of the star player on a team opposing his own, would he? Yamashita wouldn't have a reason to turn down the job, either."

He didn't know which of them was more disappointed when the electronic lock pick worked its magic on the door. The corridor was empty.

\-----

Leaving aside haunted houses, psychotic computers, and hairdye-wielding terrorists, there weren't many things that terrified Jin beyond all measure of common sense. Being suddenly cut off from Kame again was one of them.

Well, being cut off from _his_ Kame. The other one was about fifty feet down the corridor with a stunner between his shoulderblades.

Jin thumbed the door panel, finding it completely useless. Must've locked, he thought. Too bad his pick was in another universe. Kame was going to have to find his own way in.

Grasping his stunner firmly, Jin strode forwards, knowing the harsh yellow lights ruined his chances of going unseen. They really were excessively bright, designed to light the way for panicked citizens running to reach the tunnels that led down to the airtight bunkers beneath the surface of the Moon. But it wasn't his own life Jin was hoping to save.

Thumps came from behind him, presumably Kame trying to open the door. Otherwise, the corridor was quiet, the sound of Jin's footsteps covering any speech that might be coming from the other end. He kept his gaze fixed on the scene ahead, which seemed like a good plan until he paused mid-step and almost fell over.

He couldn't blame the slick floor tiles of the corridor. The guilty party was a five-second flash of memory...but not any memory Jin possessed. He'd never been to Club Medusa before, much less spent the night of his twenty-fourth birthday dancing till dawn with Yamapi, but in that instant he knew it as surely as if he'd been there himself. The Akanishi Jin sitting upstairs with his tray of sushi, he'd been there. Four years ago. It had been a lot longer than that, the last time Jin had danced with his best friend.

That was unnerving, but what was even worse was having both alter!Kame and alter!Pi call his name; one desperate, one surprised, both of them familiar faces and neither of them the people he knew.

"Put the stunner down, Yamashita." Jin figured it was best not to use Yamapi's nickname, bestowed on him by Takki - what if they'd never met? "You don't have to shoot anyone."

"We haven't seen each other in three years and those are the first words you've got for me?"

"Jin?" Jin was close enough by now to see the confusion on alter!Kame's face. "You know this guy? And when did you get changed?"

"Uh...sort of. And I didn't. It's a long story."

That triggered another memory, one of sitting in the old man's office and being told that thanks to his efforts, the Watanabe Clan had lost all their territory to the Kitagawas and as such, Jin was in for a big piece of the action - enough to keep him in good financial shape for the rest of his life, if he was careful. Jin stumbled forward another couple of paces, brushing his bangs aside with his free hand as if it was the hair falling in his eyes that prevented him seeing the truth.

"Sort of?" Yamapi sounded surprised and hurt, his voice just as Jin remembered it: slightly nasal, with a hint of childhood that no amount of growing up could eliminate entirely.

Alter!Kame took advantage of the confusion to begin edging away from the stunner, but Yamapi noticed, seizing the neck of his jersey and yanking him roughly into place. He gasped when the muzzle drove into his back.

Even though it wasn't _his_ Kame, it was still Kame, and Jin couldn't bear it. "Please, just let him go. I need to talk to him."

Yamapi shook his head. "You know the rules, Jin. The old man wants Mr. Kamenashi here to disappear, and if I don't make it happen, I'm the one who'll be disappearing." He smiled bitterly. "It's not like I took down a rival family by myself, after all. Some of us don't have that to fall back on."

If not for the memories leaking through from his other self, Jin wouldn't have had a clue about the last bit. At least that accounted for his unexpected wealth, though he couldn't understand why Yamapi wouldn't have been a part of it. Best friends shared.

"Why should some old man want me to disappear?" alter!Kame asked. "You told me the rest of the team had been moved in here because someone had tried to set the locker room on fire, and then the moment the door closed you pulled a stunner on me! Could someone _please_ tell me what's going on? I've got a game to play!" The fear was starting to leave his face, replaced by irritation.

"Sorry." Yamapi's apology lacked sincerity. "Our boss would prefer you didn't play in today's game. He'd like the Olympian Gods to win."

"Our boss..." alter!Kame repeated.

"Not mine. Not anymore."

Jin made a grab for the teddy bear dangling from Yamapi's stunner but found himself flat against the wall, pinned in place by the memory of a shot to the chest - weak, but bad enough to give the doctors a hard time - and of the young man with the dyed red hair he'd been admiring over at the bar, who'd rushed over to see if he was okay or if that drunken idiot with a grudge against all good-looking men had been the death of him. Three months later, he'd settled in Lunacy to recuperate and had moved from merely admiring the red-haired man to dating him. He hadn't told anyone yet. It felt like he was living in a soap bubble, and the moment anyone knew he was quietly crafting this new, wonder-filled life for himself, it would all go pop and he'd fall, hard and fast until he hit the ground.

"You're quitting?" Yamapi pressed alter!Kame face-first into the wall next to Jin so he could stand guard over both of them at once. The stunner was trained on alter!Kame, but Yamapi's eyes were trained on Jin. "You can't. You know what happens to people who quit."

As distracting as it was to be hit with memories of his other self, it did help give Jin a handle on himself, and how he wasn't as different as he'd feared. That gave him confidence he was telling the truth when he said, "I know, and I'm quitting anyway. For him." No need to name names.

Yamapi had an issue with that, one he made very clear. It took talent to hold a stunner on one man while kissing another, but Yamapi had never been short on talent and Jin couldn't push him away. How long had it been? In this universe, maybe three years. For Jin, far longer than that. He'd never forgotten how it felt, curling up in their pink and black bedroom with slow, tentative touches until they were sure; sure enough to give and take their pleasure when and where they wanted, sure enough that awkward teenage fumbles became heated adult-

Jin gasped, finally able to push Yamapi away. They hadn't been adults, the last time. The memory faded with loss of contact, leaving Jin relieved and embarrassed and faintly wistful. Maybe here, it had never ended.

"You're not my Jin, are you?" the other Kame whispered, half into the wall. "That's why you didn't change your clothes."

"Like I said, it's a long story." Jin couldn't deny it.

Yamapi kept shaking his head. "I have no idea what's happening but I'd rather not stay here and discuss it." He plucked the stunner from Jin's hand, stashing it away in his belt. "Let's go somewhere more comfortable, shall we?"

The corridor continued down to a trio of doors, one inside the other, each with an airtight seal. Jin allowed himself to be prodded through, the three of them entering the subterranean tunnels, Yamapi bringing up the rear with stunner still in hand. He didn't seem inclined to shoot; rather, he had the face of a man desperately confused and unable to see any way to resolve the situation. He hadn't bothered to frisk Jin for additional weapons.

Jin wasn't worried about getting shot by this alternate version of his best friend. Furthermore, he was pretty certain alter!Kame wasn't about to get stunned either, though he'd definitely miss the game. If Jin could just talk to him, he could ask about the diamond, they could find the stupid thing and get Kame to talk to it and everything would be okay again.

Assuming he didn't disappear first.

\-----

"They must've gone through to the tunnels," Koki said, pointing to the door at the other end of the corridor. "We'll have to follow them down."

"I'm not getting to see the game, am I?" Ueda asked.

Nakamaru shrugged. "It won't be much of a game anyway, with the Lunatics missing their star player. You'll probably have a better time with us."

Kame thought otherwise. He was accompanied by five people, all of whom he knew well in another life, all of them clueless to varying degrees about what was really going on. Hardly cause for a party. "Let's go before I collapse."

He didn't expect all of them to follow him, yet not a single one stayed behind. If he'd had sufficient mental capacity remaining to appreciate this, he'd have been overjoyed. Unfortunately, all the concentration he could spare was going on the suppression of foreign memories - some pleasant, some not - and the recollection of his own. He didn't want to know what would happen if the two Kamenashi Kazuyas merged.

Down the corridor they went, occasionally pausing for Kame to collect himself. Junno lent him a steadying arm when needed, still unsure about the whole clone business but willing to help to the best of his ability.

Alter!Jin took the opportunity to slip in a few queries. "Why do you have a clone? I mean, why does he have a clone? Which one of you's the original?"

"I am, and it's a long story so let's skip it for now, okay?"

"It only took you about two minutes to tell it to me," Ueda pointed out. Kame could've shot him.

"All I want to do," Kame said, "is ask my clone one simple question. That's the only thing I'm here for. I would also like to get my partner back in one piece, preferably conscious."

"And with his virtue intact?" Ueda asked.

Koki glowered. " _Far_ too late for that, I should think."

Jin's virtue, such as it was, was purely of the spirit and had been for quite some time. Kame wasn't worried about _that_. It was the fact that Jin had a bad habit of being on the wrong end of a stunner blast that concerned him. If he was having the same memory issues as Kame and lost consciousness, would he lose...himself?

Kame shivered at the thought. His life wasn't perfect but he liked it just as it was, thank you very much. Having the memories of a career in baseball wouldn't make up for the years he hadn't played it himself and he had too much he didn't want to lose. Not to mention, what would happen to the people he'd met? To Koki, Nakamaru and the others. Would they all forget he and Jin had ever existed?

"You look like you're going to throw up." Koki didn't mince words. "I'm not sure how much good going underground's going to do you."

"I'll try not to splash your shoes." Kame released the seal on the last of the three doors. They were a nuisance, those doors, because you could only go through one once the previous one had shut, and six people in the gaps between was a tight fit.

Beyond the final door was a T-junction. They'd gone from tile to metal now, with air provided by recycling units rather than filtered in from outside. The domes could go now and they'd be completely safe, though unable to return to the surface without suiting up. There were two possible routes. Each one led to a separate unit which could, in an emergency, exit to space through pre-drilled shafts. Similar setups were all over the Moon. The vessels weren't much - sublight engines only, not designed for lengthy travel - and were intended for the sole purpose of taking the residents to safety on the nearest inhabited planet, Earth.

"We split up," Kame said. "I'm going left. Koki, Jin," his voice caught on the name, "you come with me. Be careful."

He watched Nakamaru, Junno and Ueda start down the right corridor, towards the airlock at the end, before leading his own team in the opposite direction. There was no way to tell if he was on the right track...not until he found one of Jin's silver bangles lying on the floor of the airlock. He slipped it over his own wrist, closing his other hand over it for a moment as though it were Jin he held, not a mere accessory, pretty though it was.

"That belong to your partner?" The other Jin wore more elaborate, twisted silver bracelets, nothing so simple.

"Yeah." It occurred to Kame he'd omitted one important fact. "You'll know him when you see him - it'll be like looking in a mirror."

"Eh?"

"Don't look so confused," Koki said. "You'll get used to it. I wouldn't be surprised if I ran into another me around here somewhere."

Kame fervently hoped this was not going to be the case. If any more duplicates appeared he was going to give up and let the universe do as it pleased.

Koki tried to contact Nakamaru on his datband but couldn't get through. "We're on our own till we get out. Maybe they'll finish up and come find us."

"If they find their way out again." Kame wasn't being negative just for the sake of it: as spaceships went, this was the strangest one he'd ever had the misfortune to enter. There seemed to be nothing but long, narrow cabins, filled with rows of red seats, rather like the old-fashioned aircraft he'd seen in museums as a child. The sliding doors shut automatically, each one was identical. If they hadn't kept careful track of which cabins they'd visited, they could easily have searched the same one several times over.

Having Jin's bangle helped keep the stream of unwanted memories down to a trickle; Kame found it easier to retain his focus. He didn't like that they were progressing further and further through the craft with no other signs of Jin. Even if Yamapi was planning to kill the other Kame, which was sort of questionable given his basic nature, irrespective of his profession, why take him all the way down here? He could've shot him a couple of corridors ago and strolled away, and no one would've been any the wiser. Even wearing a guard's uniform, Yamapi wouldn't have attracted any attention leaving the stadium.

But Kame would've...

"These ships - they're connected by more than one tunnel, right?" Kame said. "So they can distribute evacuees underground?"

Koki nodded. "Yeah, but you'd have an awful long walk to the next one along. They're all over the place. You could go through one and come up...anywhere." His eyes lit up when he got it. "They're cutting through here to escape somewhere else!"

Kame cursed the lack of maps and doubled his pace, searching frantically for another airlock and almost getting himself trapped in a particularly aggressive sanitary cubicle. Alter!Jin gave him a hand out; Kame felt like he'd just touched his fingers to a live wire. Both of them jumped at the contact.

That's when they heard Jin scream.

\-----

"It's just a wasp," Yamapi said, "and it's dead. It won't sting you."

Jin didn't care. Wasps, dead or otherwise, were not supposed to fall from light fittings onto his jacket. Walking through a deserted underground spaceship was already giving him the creeps. Now all he needed was for the wasp to return as a ghost to truly complete what was turning out to be the worst week of his life. He could only hope Kame had found the bangle he'd left, assuming he'd managed to get through the door. It was a pity he hadn't remembered to leave it at the T-junction, which would've been more useful, but under the circumstances, he was proud of himself for thinking of it at all.

"It surprised me," he said crossly, which made alter!Kame giggle despite the tense situation. "How far do we have to go, anyway?"

"Till we find another airlock. Then we can cross through the tunnels, surface halfway across Lunacy, take my ship and go back to Earth so the old man can sort this mess out." Yamapi sighed, sounding utterly weary of the whole business. "He wanted Kamenashi to be unable to play in today's game, and I've managed that, at least."

"Great, I'm real happy for you." Jin couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "Can I ask Mr. MVP here a question and leave? It's getting hard to breathe in here."

"Sorry, you're coming back with me, Jin. Or whoever you are. You look like Jin. You sound like Jin. But you don't taste like Jin."

"Is the Jin he knows the same Jin I know?" alter!Kame asked.

Jin wished his other self was better at handling his love life. "Unfortunately, yes. And I think he's got a lot of explaining to do the next time you see him."

He wasn't kidding about it being hard to breathe. The ventilation left a lot to be desired. Maybe there were more wasps clogging up the recycling units. Another memory hit him then - age twenty-two, stung by one as he played soccer outside with his friends - and he sat down on the nearest passenger seat to massage away the phantom pain in his leg.

"Come on," Yamapi said. "I don't want to stay in here any longer than I have to. It's too quiet."

"We can fix that for you," came Koki's voice from the doorway, slightly breathless from the dead run after Jin's scream.

Behind him appeared Kame and the other Jin. Everyone in the room cried out the name of either one or the other. Jin took advantage of the confusion to swipe Yamapi's stunner - carefully, so the teddy bear didn't break - and rejoin his partner. The other Jin seized his chance to do the same. Yamapi sat down, dumbfounded.

"Here." Kame handed the silver bangle back to Jin. "You can have this back now. What happened? We heard you scream."

No way was Jin admitting he'd been scared by a dead wasp. "Trying to attract your attention. Are you okay? I kept having all these weird memories popping up and-"

"Shh," Kame put a finger over Jin's lips. "Me too. It's okay now. _We're_ okay now."

"I wish the rest of us were," Koki said. "Can we ask about the diamond and get out of here?"

"Diamond?" Yamapi was more confused than ever. "Like a baseball diamond?"

"Bit smaller than that." Kame described Kizuna. "You removed it from a safety deposit box a couple of months ago," he informed his other self.

"My grandmother left it to me. What was I supposed to do, leave it there to gather dust?" He didn't seem overly alarmed at being spoken to by himself.

"Your grandmother?" Kame and Jin spoke in unison, both surprised that Jin's fictional story had been the truth. Another one in a growing stack of coincidences.

"Yeah, my grandmother. I picked up the diamond and took it home with me. How do you know about it?"

"He earned it." Jin's explanation was quietly serious; no one dared argue with him. "If it hadn't been for Kizuna, we'd never have come together," he meant all six of them, not just he and Kame, "and Kame gave up more than any of us for it. The diamond belongs to him; we all agreed on it."

"And I need it back," Kame finished. "Please."

The two Kames stared at each other for a minute. Jin wondered if they were somehow communicating psychically. He tried reaching his own double with his mind, sending out a very basic message of "nice vest", but if it got through there was no sign.

"Is there really a curse?" Koki asked when it was clear everyone was waiting for someone else to break the silence. "Because your evil clone seems a lot saner than I'd expected. Not exactly the life-stealing type."

"Clones? Of course!" Yamapi surprised them all by jumping up. "Watanabe must've had you cloned when you infiltrated his clan, and now he's out of power he's sent you out to cause trouble for the old man!" Flushed with excitement, he seized Jin by the elbow.

"Oi!" Jin batted his best friend's double away. "I'm not a clone. I'm Akanishi Jin and I just want to go home, so can we please get the damned diamond already so Kame and I can get back where we belong?"

"If it means that much to you you can have the thing," alter!Kame said. "I think it's a little bit creepy, anyway."

"Creepy?" Kame said. "How?"

"Like...it keeps moving. I have it locked up in a safe at home, and I'll get back from practice to find it's sitting on the windowsill, or it's lying on my pillow, things like that. And those tiny wings in the centre-"

"Rings," Kame corrected.

"Wings. Butterfly wings. They move. Not all the time, just when I stare real deep into it."

Kame was all prepared to scoff until Jin admitted he'd seen them move too, though he hadn't witnessed anything else unusual about the diamond. If it had moved while locked in the safety deposit box, they wouldn't have noticed.

"I'm no expert, but that doesn't sound like normal behaviour for a stone to me." Koki scratched the back of his head. "Are you sure it's a real diamond?"

"Of course it's a diamond!" Jin wanted to tell Koki that in another universe, he'd stolen it for precisely that reason, being a jewel thief by trade. "What, you think it's actually some weird creature from another universe that just happens to look like a jewel?"

"Don't." Kame shook his head and groaned. "You've been right about a lot of things since this started and I don't like it. Let's worry about finding it first."

Alter!Kame reluctantly gave them his address. "Don't put your feet up on my furniture."

"I wouldn't!" Kame protested.

His other self grinned. "I know _you_ wouldn't, but the other guys..."

Despite himself, Kame grinned back. His double wasn't a bad sort, really - which was to be expected - so he stuck out his hand for a shake. The other Kame took it...

...and vanished.


	10. Chapter 10

Kame's fingers were still crooked in position, holding empty air. Of his other self, not so much as a strand of hair remained. "How did I..."

"Maybe one of you was made of anti-matter," Yamapi muttered, but Koki talked him out of that theory on the grounds that none of them would still be here if that was the case.

"What did you do with him?" Alter!Jin was understandably distraught. "Bring him back!" He made a grab for Kame's still outstretched hand, but Jin got there first, pulling him back with an arm around his waist.

The aforementioned waist went 'pop' and disappeared, along with its owner.

The sound of Jin crashing to the floor knocked Kame out of his daze. "Come on," he said, giving Jin a hand up. "I think we'd better go before we destroy the universe. I guess we weren't supposed to interact with our other selves."

It was far too late for Kame to substitute for himself in the baseball game, and Junno had definitely missed throwing the first ball. Yamapi had succeeded in his task, though not as he'd planned, and he was meek to the point of sullenness as the four of them made their way back to the T-junction, where they found Ueda, Nakamaru and Junno waiting for them. Ueda's annoyance at missing the game lasted only as long as it took for Kame's glee to become infectious - about thirty seconds - and before long, all of them were elated about going after the diamond.

Not that anyone except Kame and Jin could follow what was going on, mind. Nakamaru had to stop whining about it after Koki pointed out that he'd wanted a bit of excitement in his life and he was certainly getting it now.

"But why did the other two disappear?" Junno asked. "Were they holograms, not clones?"

Koki opened the door that took them back to the stadium. "There weren't any clones. I don't know what they were, but they weren't clones."

"No clones," Kame admitted. "And no curse, either. But we do need that diamond. That'll be the end of it, I promise."

"Just get me back home before the end of my holiday," Nakamaru said. "That's all I want."

\-----

Getting out of the Crescent Moon Stadium was much easier than getting in had been. The majority of the crowd was watching the game. Kame almost felt guilty about destroying the Lunatics' chance of victory, but in his mind, they'd been destined to fail anyway. In that way, at least, the universe had been restored.

To no one's surprise, Yamapi refused to go with. Watching his best friend vanish into thin air, apparently destroyed by a double, was too much for him to deal with. He asked for no explanation and received none, leaving to report in to his superiors, for all the good it would do him.

They knew where they had to go. Alter!Kame's apartment was a brief train ride and a short walk away from the stadium, one of a hundred identical units reaching for the protective dome above. Using the electronic lock pick borrowed from his other self, Jin let them in.

Kame entered first, eager to see what kind of life his other self had. His passion was obvious. There were framed posters of historically famous baseball teams, an autographed ball in a glass case, a wall-mounted plaque in the shape of a bat... There were also signs of Kame's other passion, as pictures of Jin - sometimes alone, sometimes with Kame - were pinned up on a corkboard. They looked happy. Frequently dorky, but happy.

The safe wasn't hard to find, unless you counted the neat stack of laundry piled on the top, lemony-fresh and waiting to be packed away. Kame resisted the urge to do it, figuring the laundry's existence would soon be wiped out - either that, or the whole thing would come crashing down around their ears and he'd be forced to take over his double's life, apartment included, in which case the laundry could wait until after the shock had worn off. It seemed so stupid now, thinking that talking to a diamond could fix things. What if he was wrong? What if the security guard at the bank had traumatised him so badly he'd simply imagined the whole thing? What if-

"Stop thinking, start cracking," Jin said. "My pick won't work on the lock and we don't know the combination."

But Kame did. 1-5-8-2, same as always. He crouched down to open the safe, feeling like he was there to disarm a bomb since everyone else was waiting well back, just in case. A few quick turns and the door swung open. Kame removed the small velvet case from the shelf, popped the clasp, and felt his elation slip away when he saw the Kizuna-shaped indent in the cushion.

They searched the apartment from top to bottom. Where might a capricious diamond hide? In such a neat, orderly home, surely it would stand out, whether lurking amongst the plants on the windowsill or masquerading as a pair of socks, arranged by colour in the uppermost dresser drawer.

It was inevitable that Kame was the one who found it, resting on a single pillow at the end of the bed. Jin was right behind him, of course. He wasn't risking separation again.

"Found it," Kame murmured. "Now what? If I sit here and talk to it the others are going to think I'm crazy."

Jin shrugged. "If it listens, it's not going to matter what they think, is it? Only me, and I already know you're crazy."

Kame knew he was being fed a line, but still... "Yeah, crazy about you." He turned around to call the others over, only to find the apartment deserted. "Jin, look behind you."

"You take your eyes off those guys for a second and they vanish," Jin complained. "Again." Shades of Red Spot Terminal. He was afraid to open the front door in case the rest of the building had disappeared.

"So much for the privacy issue." Kame sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, regarding Kizuna with the sort of wariness that one would ordinarily reserve for a caged tiger, albeit one suspected of having universe-twisting abilities. "Um...hi? My name is...oh, I guess you already know who I am." He wasn't sure what to say that wouldn't make him sound like a complete idiot.

"You're floundering."

"And you're not helping." Kame touched his index finger to the diamond; when nothing lethal happened, he risked picking it up.

Since that left Kame with one free hand, Jin took it. If anything happened to Kame, Jin wanted it to happen to both of them, no matter what. He wasn't going to be left behind. "Do you think it's alive?"

"I don't know that 'alive' is how I'd- Look! In the centre!" Kame held the diamond up for Jin to see.

The wings were twitching, beating a pattern so small no real butterfly could've flown it. Jin found it unnerving, even grotesque, to watch the tiny, should-be static rings flicker between his blinks; he held his gaze nonetheless, searching for confirmation that they could, in some way, communicate with the diamond, make it understand what they wanted. _To go home._

"Please," Jin said softly. "Please change it all back."

Kame tried to remember what he'd said before. Happy memories of playing baseball as a child, hopes and dreams he'd never been able to realise as an adult, of being the number one baseball player in the Sol System. He'd been saying what he'd wanted - once. If given the choice between the two lives, he knew which one he'd pick. There was no question about it.

" _Please_ ," he added his voice to Jin's. "I don't know what you are, or what you've done or why, but if you can understand me, please give us our lives back. We want to be back with our friends on the _KAT-TUN_ , as part of the JE Fleet, in a universe where Imai Tsubasa is Earth President and Yamapi's a commodore with a mad crush on Admiral Takki. Where I can wake up every morning with Jin next to me, stealing all the covers."

"Wait a second," Jin began, but Kame squeezed his hand and continued.

"Where the only time I get to play professional baseball is in a virtual game, and I'm okay with that because it's what I've chosen for myself. Because I've chosen to live this life, to be with these people. It's never going to be perfect, but it makes me happy. Can you understand that?"

Another flicker. Kame wondered if it was code that he was somehow supposed to interpret. That was more in Junno's line of work; all he could do was keep going and hope he was getting through.

 _If_ he wasn't wasting his time. Talking to a jewel as though it were a small child, or a pet. He'd carried it around from time to time like he'd been taking it out for a walk, off for a stroll like a beloved cat or dog. It was the symbol of the friendship they shared, all six of them, representing the bonds they'd forged through stolen ships and shots fired and had broken Kame free, finally, from the shackles of his former life. It was only natural he'd formed an attachment to it.

But was it really sentient?

"I wish you could talk back," Kame said. "Then I wouldn't feel so stupid saying all this. How am I even supposed to know if you're listening?"

"No need to feel stupid. I like to hear it." Jin closed his free hand over the diamond, so he and Kame held it between them. It hurt, a little, but not being able to see the flickers was a definite plus in his book. "Because it's what I want too. You're all my family, even when we fight." He started laughing. "Just listen to us! We've spent over a week lying through our teeth to everyone we meet, and now we're telling the truth like our lives depend on it."

"We weren't very good at the lying part, even if some of it did turn out to be true - a number of the stories you told, in fact, starting with that nightmare of yours. Sure you're not the one who changed the universe?"

"I know I'm amazing, but I don't think I'm omnipotent. Maybe the freaky little thing likes me as much as it likes you, so it took me into account as well."

That was unexpected. Kame almost dropped the diamond. "You think it likes me?"

"Of course it likes you. You took it for walks and talked to it. so it gave you what it thought you wanted. I don't know what it is but it's obviously the only one around, so I figure it was lonely." Jin was feeling pretty lonely himself. All through the dome, the sky had been set to 'night' and with no one save the two of them in this familiar stranger's apartment the impending darkness brought with it cold isolation and a fear that they might never get home again.

Kame could feel Jin's shivers in both hands, wanted to tuck them both under the blanket and hold on till they both forgot they were alone now. The friends they'd made over the last week and a half had slipped away from them, and he suspected if they returned to the spaceport, the _Sakura_ would no longer be docked. They were back where they started, with no one but each other for comfort.

"I'm lonely now. It hurts _here_." Kame brought their joined hands up to his chest. He couldn't reach his heart, but he got close enough to give Jin the general idea. "There are a few pieces missing."

"Same with mine." Jin untangled his fingers from Kame's, using them to remove Kame's fedora. He'd lost his own back at the stadium, but like an old holovid action hero, Kame had managed to hang onto his hat. Removing the hat didn't mean he saw any more of Kame's face - though the curtains were still open, the lights were off, and the only source of illumination was the streetlights outside. They were six storeys up; that was just enough light for an outline. Neither of them was in a rush to switch on the lamps.

"Cold?" Kame asked.

"Freezing. These uniforms are pathetically thin."

"Then," Kame shifted on the bed so he could kick the blankets down with his legs, "should we? I don't think the owner's going to be coming back to complain."

It wasn't quite like sliding into the bed of a dead man, since the man in question might not even have existed, but it still felt strange for them to kick off their boots and wriggle under the covers, keeping the diamond held between them. Jin immediately felt warmer, though he suspected that had more to do with the way Kame was lying half on top of him, mouth pressed to the edge of his jaw. "You think we're more likely to get home if we give it a show?"

Kame laughed against Jin's skin, a warm tickle of air. "You can't blame me for getting carried away. The last time we got near an actual bed, you turned me down in case I knocked you up."

He silenced Jin's outrage with slow, lingering kisses, each one a welcome reminder of home. Jin let him in, lips parting in invitation while his free hand crept across Kame's back, drawing him nearer. Holding the diamond grew uncomfortable, but they kept their fingers twined around it.

"I was okay with the chairs," Jin muttered. "Couches, loveseats, rocking chairs, horrible wicker contraptions...I could live with those. But there's a limit to how much I'm prepared to share you with inanimate objects."

"It's not exactly inanimate," Kame pointed out. "And the rocking chair was a mistake. We're not doing that again. Too dangerous."

"Whatever you say, Captain Kamenashi."

"Captain Kamenashi says Captain Akanishi should move his snazzy customised blaster because it's digging into him."

"That's not my blaster." Jin jiggled his shoulder so his jacket slipped down. "It's Yamapi's stunner. I never gave it back. I can still feel the teddy bear."

Kame didn't want any reminders clinging to them. He fished around for the teddy, seized the stunner, and dropped it gently over the side of the bed. "I'm not snuggling up to someone who's carrying more weapons than me."

"I'd be hard-pressed to shoot you from this angle." Jin sighed happily, content to have Kame settle over him, body warm and not too heavy, just right, the way they'd always fit together. Affection, friendship and a shared sense of fun went a long way towards overcoming the problems they faced. Jin knew in his heart that they could do anything, so long as they were together.

"You're giving me that sappy smile again."

Jin smirked. "How the hell would you know? You can't see my face in this light."

"True. I can't even see the window now. There must be a blackout if all the lights have gone outside too."

"Then we really are alone in the dark." Jin closed his eyes. It made no difference.

" _Together_ in the dark. Just like being back in your cabin or mine, lights off, shutters down over the portholes so the starlight can't come in." Kame nuzzled his cheek against Jin's. "Is that so bad?"

Jin opened his eyes when Kame's hand sliding under his shirt made him jump. The darkness wasn't as complete as he'd thought. "You see the same glowing numbers I do?"

"Glowing numbers?" Kame looked up to find a faint red light, telling him the time in three different locations. Ship, local space, and Earth. It was Jin's alarm clock, last seen next to Jin's bed, in Jin's cabin...on board the _KAT-TUN_. "Jin!"

Kame didn't have to tell him twice. Jin reached for the nightlight, knowing exactly where the switch would be. Faint light chased the shadows away, leaving them excited and amazed and relieved in equal measure. They were _home_.

Jin didn't even notice the diamond had disappeared until Kame cupped his face with both hands. "We're back," Kame whispered, voice catching. "Aren't we?"

They had to be. Jin didn't trust his own voice to remain steady, didn't even want to contemplate what would happen if he walked out his cabin door and found an empty ship beyond. He wanted them to be home so badly it overwhelmed every other feeling...every other feeling, save another, equally powerful desire, this one for Kame. Couldn't they have this one moment before they found out for sure?

"We're home," Jin said firmly. It had to be true. It had to be. "Can you hit the light?"

Kame plunged them back into darkness, no longer cold and threatening but comfortable, like a well-worn blanket, shielding them from the world as they communicated by touch alone, every movement familiar and reassuring. There was nothing now to interfere, nothing to stop Jin shedding the remains of his stolen LIPS uniform and nesting in a tangle of clothing and limbs as Kame rocked against him.

Nothing but the cabin door sliding open to reveal Ensign Taguchi Junnosuke, silhouetted against the light from the corridor. "Guys? Koki told me now would be a good time to ask for a promotion."

Jin threw a pillow at him. Junno retreated, door closing behind him; they could hear him outside, being lectured by Koki about the importance of timing and how he should've waited another two minutes.

"We're home!" Kame whooped, hugging Jin fiercely and not caring that yet again, they'd been interrupted at an inconvenient moment. "Home!"

Home. Back with the people they loved. Jin thought about it for a second. "Junno?" he yelled. "You can have the promotion on one condition - if you call engineering and get the lock fixed!"


End file.
